Name: 28 Weeks Later
Released: 2007
Rating: 73.7

Last night as I sat down and watch 28 Weeks Later, it isn't another zombie movie but don't think I'm trying to low ball it although its not quite there with its predecessor reason why I only gave it 6.5 but its a movie worth watching. It's a continuation of 28 Days Later, which was so good in 2002 and although it's been almost 10 years this sequel really holds up. As it is 2007, I come back to this movie in 2024 and I appreciate how well it was made, again it was great but its just not quite there, at least for me, we all have different taste and I might watch it again so in case I didn't catch some details. With the first one having Danny Boyle behind the camera, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was simply going to have to fill some big shoes but he somehow managed to create something that is familiar and fresh at the same time, they just did something really special with the same intense feeling from the first movie and added their own twist to it.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18177528/
Platform: AppleTV+

Rottentomatoes Rating

Source The movie does have an intense opening sequence that sets the tone for the rest of the close to two hours that the movie last. Six months in after this Rage virus outbreak that turned Britain into this wasteland and we meet Don, played by Robert Carlyle, who is trapped in this farmhouse with his wife and a couple of other survivors. This moment is when the infected attack and Don has to make this gut decision to save himself at the expense of his wife, haunts the rest of the movie, it's not just about zombies running around, it is about the choices we make when we are scared and what those choices do to us later. At this moment into the movie I was like NO WAY he left her behind, after watching this scene, plus it was filmed with a shaky cam and the chaos, it really puts you right in the middle of it all and Carlyle really makes you feel every bit of his character's fear and guilt.

Let me get into the main story after I already throw out how shocking this movie starts. When NATO forces have secured parts of London and are trying to repopulate it with survivors. The first wave of people coming back are Don’s kids, Tammy and Andy, and that’s where things become complicated. We don't know what they've got, but the military got this whole secure zone set up called District One and you can tell from the get go that it's not going to last long. It's all really tense because you know it's all going to fall apart and when it does, it's going to be bad, consider the amount of infected people, its always the same story how no matter how high walls are, zombies always get around somehow its that rage and energy that drives them into doing what ever its needed even if that is destroying themself.

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Source Back in the day when this movies came out it was a really interesting journey that takes you through what happens when you try to rebuild after a disaster like this. It's not about surviving anymore, it's about trying to get back to normal but how do you do that when the threat’s still out there? and lets be realistic hundreds if not thousands in a place as populated as London. The presence of military intermediately plant this idea of safety in your brain but in reality it never is, military never outnumber the zombies and not even with nukes can control them as its a virus its not just a group of people infected, it keeps spreading. It all will start to go to hell when the kids sneak out to see their old home and it’ll remind us of how fragile this whole system is and how a single decision can bring everything down.

Some of the things that I recognize from this movie is how well it does to keep the balance between action and horror mix with other themes about family, survival and people who will do anything when they are push to the limit, say how Don told "C'ya" to his wife. Different than the first movie this one goes more into the story of a broken family and what happens when we make bad choices, and it gets VERY VERY bad for Don because instead of owning his mistake he decides to take the easy route with his children and lie to them, reason why it all goes to hell for him, when his children sneak out to visit their old place.

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Source This is a sequel that really shows you how you can take a successful formula and build on it without copying what came before. We're still dealing with the infected that are running around, causing chaos, but now we're looking at it from a different angle, the military's involved, people are trying to rebuild. They took the original concept and did the same thing, well this is the OG as "Fear The Walking Dead", they did like their own spin off but as a sequel, they mostly thought we don’t want to just try to recreate the same story. The virus itself hasn't changed, it's still the same thing that turns people into these rage filled monsters in seconds but now there is more data about the virus and that's what makes this movie different from other zombie movies 28 Days Later.

They didn't use too much CGI, which probably is why it still looks good and the makeup and effects they used still hold up today. The infected in this movie are even more terrifying than they were in the first one, they also seem to be faster plus there are more of them, now we know what they can do and how fast it can all go to shit. Even with the creation of District One, it's absolute anarchy at its core all around and they still move and attack in ways that are very random, plus there still the presence of the survivors who at times are more dangerous than the infected.

28 Weeks Later is a worth watching sequel and a decent movie that just as the first one took a great concept but only use it on its favor to create a different story with the same backdrop. Now that I have rewatch it got to say its a movie worth buying for my collection. It’s got enough connections to the first movie to be part of the same world but it’s its own thing with the same take on the outbreak story. The acting, particularly Robert Carlyle, really makes the emotional damage to anyone watching from the start, his bad desicions, web of lies of everything that happens to him basically and while some of the military characters might be a little too predictable, the main cast does a great job. Given how well this one turned out I wonder why they jumping from 28 Weeks Laster to 28 Years Later, I would have to look this up since in 2007 I was not much into movies as I am now, they have a pretty high bar to clear with the upcoming movie that its been said not to be a direct sequel and probably another spin off type of movie like 28 Weeks Later did, but I'm 100% interested to see where they take the story next.

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Zombie films were all the rage in all of the 2000's. Some, like me, would say that they kind of overdid it and it seemed like every other film and series had something to do with zombies. When 28 Days Later came out I really appreciated it even though at that point I was kind of sick of zombie films already. I feel as though they approached that one with a different and fresh perspective focusing on the loneliness of being one of the few human remnants left in an area rather than the constant threat of impending invasion from the recently zombified. The "28" saga takes a bit of a twist on zombification in that the turn from human to zombie happened extremely rapidly which meant you or your friend getting bit would change things extremely fast. There were other aspects of it that made that one fresh to me as well but a lot of this might have to do with the fact that both of the films were British productions and they seem to do things differently, and in a lot of ways better, than the Hollywood machine.

With the announcement of 28 Years Later coming soon with some seriously great actors in it I got excited like most people did and this encouraged me to go back and re-watch 28 Weeks Later because the only thing I remembered about it was the epic opening sequence where the father is forced to abandon his family in their country house that they have been holed up in for so long in the English countryside.

As the film carried on I started to realize that this film was not as good as I remembered it being and in fact, it's actually quite bad and probably propped up by fans of the original that want the sequel to be a lot better than it actually is. It also may have been manipulated by the studios that are making 28 Years and this is something I am always suspicious of.

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The reason that I so vividly remember the opening 8 minutes of this film and only that is because of the fact that in my opinion that is actually the only part of this movie that is inventive and fresh. The rest of it just goes down the typical path of action films that this genre and many others are so inundated with that it is so predictable and boring. I also feel as though they felt compelled to put some "star power" in this one as opposed to the first one that featured mostly, people that were then nobodies in the acting world. Of course Cillian Murphy has gone on to do rather epic things but in 2002 most people had no idea who he was.

Anyway, they throw in Rose Byrne and Jeremy Renner, both of whom I actually like, but they were not necessary. Idris Alba being thrown in there as well was just as unnecessary and I think they wasted a bunch of money on everyone's salary in this because it would have been the same film without them.

That isn't the main issue I have with this movie though, the problem is that it just gets rather boring after the initial really intense opening sequence that honestly, sets a bad tone for the rest of the film because the rest of it cannot keep pace with that. I know they say to start strong and end strong, but the rest of the movie is just a series of rather convenient situations that are basically impossible, but they needed them for plot progression so they made them happen anyway.

[src](https://halloweenyearround.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/weeks-cover.webp)

The opening segment that shows a man running for his life while also crying because moments before he was forced to abandon his wife and child is truly moving. The entire everything about this is just brilliant. Then from that point forward we are thrust into a military type of film where the USA has taken over the UK and has strict rules about where people can go and what they can do. So strict in fact, that a duo of children easily circumvent their blockade the very first time they try.

[src](https://mutantreviewersmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/28-weeks-later.jpg?w=723&h=407)

Not only do they get around the guards and the blockades with such ease that zombies definitely would have done it by now if that was possible, but they also find and operate motorbikes that have been abandoned for a while now. As someone that has owned a motorbike in the past I know that this is not how they work. I don't expect pure realism in films but convenient plot contrivances such as this are things that really annoy me in films. The worst such plot device is not having a mobile phone signal, but this whole conveniently placed vehicle that starts immediately is a close 2nd.

It's almost as if they felt bad about making that so easy because they go the opposite direction much later in the film when they stumble upon a car that refuses to start and thus requires the sacrifice of one of their own to push it and roll-start it. Of course the keys to this vehicle were conveniently in the car also, as if that was something that anybody actually does in modern times.

28 weeks later isn't really a complete story so much as it is a combination of rather random events where at the end we are left wondering what the ending actually is, which is something I normally enjoy but in the case of 28 Weeks Later it was obviously an open ended film to allow for another installment should the producers choose to do so. They waited nearly 20 years to do it, but well, it served its purpose well I suppose.

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I wasn't moved by any of the characters really. Jeremy Renner's crisis of conscious is a little bit interesting when he is told to kill civilians and takes great issue with this but later on in the film he is fired upon by his fellow soldiers and this doesn't make a great deal of sense. Actually, nothing really makes sense as soon as the kids easily break through the "green zone" barricades that are heavily guarded around the clock by trained super-soldiers.

I don't really know how to fully explain how this all falls apart after the very short act 1, but it definitely does fall apart and the fact that it became a human vs. human story instead of human vs. zombie was OK and The Walking Dead really ran with that one, but in this movie I simply didn't find any of the scenarios, such as outrunning a napalming of an area on foot, to be at all believable.

Also there is the question of one particular zombie always being hot on the tails of the kids is really silly and the opposite of everything we have been taught about zombies by these very movies up to this point. They are just breaking the rules they established in order to attempt to add more to the story but at least in my opinion it doesn't really work.

Should I watch it?

I can't really recommend that you see this one as it should be clear from what I have already written above. I think if you haven't seen any of the "28" films go and watch 28 Days Later. Aside from a couple of stupid moments that film is absolutely epic and deserves the fame that it has. While I am sure there are going to be some people out there that disagree with me on this, I say give this one a hard pass as I feel it will actually decrease your enthusiasm for next year's 28 release.

_{This movie can be legally streamed with Hulu, Paramount Plus, and AppleTV+}

28 Weeks Later

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