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I wasn’t a big fan of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, an apocalyptic
vision of the near future in which a virus has turned most of the
world’s people into frenetic zombies. For me, this was simply an
exercise in gore, and I just can’t abide zombies who run the 100-yard
dash in eight seconds. Give me the old-school shuffling kind any day.
Fortunately, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has much more on his mind
than a simple rehash in his sequel 28 Weeks
Later, a ferocious cautionary tale for our
times. There’s gore galore to keep fans of the genre happy, but
there’s also grist for the viewer’s cerebral mill. Set 28 weeks after the end of the first film’s
initial breakout, things are still in chaos; families have been separated
and society as we know it has disappeared. Don (Robert Carlyle) has
seemingly lost everything, having left his wife, Alice (Catherine
McCormack) and small child to be a monster meal. His older children, Andy
(Mackintosh Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots), were out of the country
during the initial outbreak, but now that they’ve returned to England
they have more than a few questions about the whereabouts of their mother
and are less than happy with the answers Don provides them. Soon these
precocious kids sneak into the forbidden zone to look for Mom and personal
treasures. Imagine everyone’s surprise when Alice shows up alive and
well. She’s soon quarantined by U.S. authorities, who think that she
may carry an antibody to the rage. Once all hell breaks loose, it’s hard to tell
just who the real monsters are. You can forgive the rage-fueled zombies for
ripping your flesh off, but the American “peacekeepers” who
kill people indiscriminately have no excuse. The parallels to the war in
Iraq are inescapable here, with innocent Londoners caught between the
Americans and the “insurgents.” This is a horror movie that
will turn your stomach at the same time it engages your brain.
This article appears in May 3-9, 2007.
