Review: 28 Weeks Later (2007)

Stars: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne

Budget: £15 million

Directed By: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

The inevitable sequel to a film that was a breakthrough hit and pretty much exposed us to terrifying fast infected type zombies.
The rage virus infects you in seconds then causes you to go insane finding others to attack then infect others as they attack them too.

With a near double the budget it was a mammoth under taking by the studios and stars a lot of upcoming fresh but familiar faces. Both British and otherwise, From Idris Elba to Jeremy Renner.
How do you improve then expand on a story that was pretty unique for it's time?
Broaden it's scope then add in some variables.

Those variables make it weeks later (28) the UK is now clean and being cleaned out by NATO services. You add in immunity too. Where as it wasn't as praised the first film it was very successful still, making $64 million back on it's budget. This does not follow anyone from the end of the last film in that sense it is a different story told twenty eight weeks later.

We see the outbreak of the virus in the first few minutes of this film, we join a new family, Don (Carlyle) as the father. His wife Alice (who have two children who are thankfully out of the country at the time) they are holed up in a house when the infected strike.
Don is forced to run from the scene when the infected break in separating him and Alice. Him along with Jacob escape on a boat, though Jacob falls overboard then gets overwhelmed by infected. Don escapes as the seemingly sole survivor of the group.

Then as we see at the end of the last film the infected start to die off through starvation, then ahem.. 28 weeks later thanks to NATO intervention the reopen the UK to returning residents. Is 28 weeks long enough is that a real possibility in the real world?
We'll hopefully never know, all i know is at the moment we're in lock down over a VERY semi deadly virus, so anything more deadly or worse than that?
Who knows.

Alice's children return on one lot of survivor returns to the country, Tammy and Andy. They are reunited with Don, who has survived too, though he makes up some story about their mother so he doesn't seem so much of a dick.
When Andy is afraid (due his younger age) of forgetting what his mother looks like, Tammy and him find a way out of the quarantine zone (yeah amazing security right?). They decide to go to their old house to get some photos for memories.
While there they discover Alice, their mother is still alive but in a weird delirious state, they put down to 28 weeks of surviving alone. Soldiers break in discovering them, Alice is quarantined and the kids are sent to be berated by the leaders.

While Alice's blood is being worked on, Don feeling remorse gets in to see his wife. He's genuinely sorry for leaving Alice, as he was fearing for his life. Alice is silent and a little bewildered as Don strides around apologizing, he then kisses her.
Right at the same time scientists discover that due to some reason Alice has become the first known asymptomatic carrier. This maybe something to do with her eyes being different colours too, one brown, one blue one does show symptoms of the virus (bloodshot etc).
At this time we get Don who has just has some major fluidic transference in the shape of a french kiss with Alice. Within seconds like we've seen before, he begins to fly into a rage as the virus takes hold of his mind. He violently attacks Alice tearing into her in a violent rage, killing her he turns on the soldier just outside the room.

General Stone (the leader of district 1) orders a purge of the area along with Alice. Don has however found a way out where he starts infecting lots of people. This of course means more and more turn soon overwhelming the base. Tammy and Andy are rescued by army scientist Scarlet, the soldiers are also told to start shooting anyone infected or not.
Don seemingly slightly more in control of his actions than other infected (newer strain perhaps?) appears to follow Tammy and Andy. General Stone orders the whole area firebombed, Scarlet says the kids genetic material could hold a cure so they have to get to a chopper to get away.

The pilot says he will not take the civilians as they'll be shot down right away without getting to explain. Doyle another soldier says he's help them escape by ground to Wembley stadium. While trying to escape some nerve gas and flamethrower equipped other soldiers Doyle is burned alive when he helps Scarlet and the kids escape.
Some point later Don finds the trio, kills Scarlet then infects Don, Tammy kills him. We'll leave it there as the films well worth watching, it is more of the same as the film, you know the virus, it does take a while into the film before it resurfaces. This raises the tension of the situation a lot, it is flawed though on a few levels but if you ignore those it's a fun watch.
The movie does however end with it open ended to allow for a sequel, 28 months later perhaps?
Although this 13 years later has not happened yet, though it keeps raising it's head in the news every now and then.

THN awards 28 weeks later a solid 3 stars out of 5 with a recommendation to watch.