28 Weeks Later
Dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (UK 2007)
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars (average)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

With a slightly smaller budget, this lazy sequel probably would have gone direct to video. Very little thought has been put into taking the series in a new direction, as exhibited by the plot. After those infected with the rage virus in the previous film (i.e. most of Britain) have died off, the few survivors come out from under the rocks and the refugee camps and begin to build a new enclave in the center of London with the “help” of the US military. I say “help,” because they act with all the forethought and intelligence of five-year-olds in a special class. Actually, I take that back, the military here has forethought but only of the sinister, plot-required kind. Throughout the first half of the film, there are references to a potential “Code Red” situation – obviously a plan for an outbreak. When the inevitable outbreak occurs (via a ridiculously contrived chain of events), it turns out the US Army had the foresight to create a command bunker and set aside special weapons for a zero-tolerance containment attack (a logical but less efficient take on the great ending of Return of the Living Dead), but their entire plan for the civilian population consists of barricading them in a room with a locked door that a man with no tools can break into. Furthermore, they leave the one person who can reinfect the population in an unguarded room with no attendants that the janitor can access. In fact, the one lesson learned from this film is that the US military isn’t capable of guarding a trashcan from a raccoon in broad daylight. The Iraq inference is there to be drawn, but I am loath to give the filmmakers too much credit – no Romeros they.

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