Not
as cerebral as the first film, 28 Weeks Later is a
pointless sequel adding nothing more.
Peter Veugelaers:
EntertainmentNutz.com
The
future of the world is bleak in this obvious contemporary anti-war cum
AIDS era allegory. Denizens of people infected with an all-consuming
virus lose their humanness to acts akin to senseless lemmings jumping
off cliffs. Mauling one another, Britain is no longer great, it’s
mayhem. Bring in the macho U.S. army to control the situation.
The
outbreak is believed to be under control as families cross back into the
mainland after 28 weeks of quarantine. One family gets lost in the
commotion. A husband, Don (Robert Carlyle) escapes from an attack of
rabid intruders into their cottage. He arrives into London, his children
catch up with him. Wife (Catherine McCormack) is mysteriously gone. Rust
never sleeps: Don gets infected through a carrier blowing the city into
chaos once again. The sequel to 28 Days Later continues the story
of the virus that obliterated London, centring it on a family who scour
the out of control and ruined city, and not the lone survivor who picks
up other survivors along the way as it did in part one.
Not
as cerebral as the first film, 28 Weeks Later is a pointless
sequel adding nothing more. It has rudimentary shocks of horrific blood
imbued images, an unsteady camera capturing in shaky motions. There’s a
conscience to the U.S. military mentality in the name of a scientist
played by Rose Byrne who sees hope and cures. That’s nothing new, so for
a futuristic thriller it’s short on imagination and long on making an
anti-war point.
Overblown, overdone, and ultimately unconvincing …. It does have
believable moments, though, and a sense of believable foreboding. Case
in point, the authentic sense of a war zone setting and the scene of the
city getting bombed is an eye catching centrepiece of special effects.
Robert Carlyle is effortlessly good. There is also an arresting theme –
a blurring of what’s human in a violent world, leaving unanswered
questions and mystery.
But
it does not capitalise on the promise of the first half, instead
meandering in simple and repetitive plotting and image-making.
Six months after the rage virus
has annihilated the British Isles, the US Army declares that the war against
infection has been won, and that the reconstruction of the country can begin. In
the first wave of returning refugees, a family is reunited -- but one of them
unwittingly carries a terrible secret. The virus is not yet dead, and this time,
it is more dangerous than ever.