28 Weeks Later (Blu-ray) (2007)

"...not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach...brutal and almost exhaustingly terrifying...  A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.  Desson Thomson, Washington Post
"Swift, vicious and grimly imaginative...exceeds its predecessor, "28 Days Later," in every way.  Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"Even better than the original.  Pete Hammond, Maxim
"A ferociously entertaining thriller with sympathetic characters, stunning set pieces and pulsating excitement.  Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter

Editor's Note Danny Boyle's surprise 2003 hit, 28 DAYS LATER, gets the sequel treatment here. Few elements from the first film remain--actor Cilian Murphy doesn't return, and Boyle and screenwriter/novelist Alex Garland take producer credits this time out. In their places step director/co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (INTACTO) and actor Robert Carlyle (TRAINSPOTTING), who bring the original story to its next logical step. The zombies (again referred to as "the infected") from the first film have died out and England is ready for repopulation. The American military are slowly bringing British citizens back to London, where a heavily guarded community is picking up the pieces and trying to return to normal life. Carlyle plays Don, a man who has lost his wife but is reunited with his children, Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots), near the start of Fresnadillo's film. The two kids soon escape from the heavily guarded community, go off searching for their childhood home, and discover that mom might not be quite as dead as they originally thought. Chaos follows, with the sadistic military and the forlorn survivors battling both each other and "the infected." Fresnadillo apes much of Boyle's style from the original film, shooting in rapidly edited sequences that cause plenty of blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. A pounding soundtrack helps enliven the scenes with "the infected," and an abundance of swooping aerial shots highlight the desolate London landscape. A few minor sub-plots emerge, Fresnadillo offers sly commentary on the military's trigger-happy tendencies, and the film ends up somewhere in between zombie fare such as George A. Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD and dystopian visions of the future such as Alfonso Cuaron's CHILDREN OF MEN.

	Amanda Walker
	Jeremy Renner
	Robert Carlyle
	Rose Byrne
	Allon Reich - Producer
	Chris Gill - Editor
	Danny Boyle - Executive Producer
	Denis Schnegg - Art Director
	Enrique Chediak - Cinematographer
	John Murphy - Original Music By
	Juan Carlos Fresnadillo - Director
	Mark Tildesley - Production Designer
	Patrick Rolfe - Art Director
	Rowan Joffe, et. al. - Writer

New York Times
"It is brutal and almost exhaustingly terrifying, as any respectable zombie movie should be. It is also bracingly smart, both in its ideas and in its techniques." 05/11/2007 p.E1-E7

Total Film
3 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's stylish, disturbing and not without its own ideas....[With] non-stop action..." 07/01/2007 p.38

Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's not only a worthy sequel to the original, but a razor-sharp horror in its own right." 08/01/2007 p.92

Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo handles the set-pieces superbly..." 10/01/2007 p.132

ReelViews 6 of 10
28 Days Later, while not terribly original, was suspenseful and involving. 28 Weeks Later is neither. The characters aren't as sympathetic or interesting. The kids are generic and the script doesn't care much about the adults. Robert Carlyle, Catherine McCormack, and Rose Byrne are criminally underused. Compare them to Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, and Brendan Gleeson from the first film, all of whom inhabited better developed and more sympathetic personalities...It's too bad, because the fundamental idea of extending the storyline introduced in 28 Days Later is an intriguing one. The problem is that the people entrusted with the responsibility of bringing this to the screen made decisions that resulted in a deeply flawed product. My advice to Fresnadillo: next time you make a movie, allow viewers to see what's happening in real time rather than have to interpolate based on the results. Technique and style are more at fault than any other issue in undermining the effectiveness of this zombie thriller. - James Berardinelli

FilmCritic.com 7 of 10
The grisly 28 Weeks Later... jettisons the director, cast, and recurring characters from the original film -- Danny Boyle's 2003 nightmare vision 28 Days Later -- and keeps only the franchise's dynamic plot device: a rage virus that, in seconds, turns unsuspecting citizens into violent zombies. It's an effective way to wipe the slate clean before more blood is splattered across it...Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo structures his picture less like a conventional sequel and more like a "next chapter" in the horror saga, which might explain why this fresh, energized, and clever installment works better than it should...The movie improves as the survival prognosis of the main characters worsens. And the way it's currently structured, the 28 franchise could last forever: The ending of this segment teases a potential location shift for the inevitable 28 Months installment. - Sean O'Connell