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Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later has become one of the most high-profile British horror movies of the last couple of decades, and served as a springboard for the careers of its lead actors (Cilian Murphy and Naomie Harris). Its low-budget success story made a sequel almost inevitable. Boyle, together with writer Alex Garland, went off to make Sunshine, so the pair act as executive producers on Weeks. Handling the reigns is Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and he brings a markedly different style to the film. Days' cheap digital look, filled with skewed camera angles, is replaced by mostly handheld camerawork and a markedly higher effects budget. Fresnadillo particularly lets loose with the camera shaking during the action scenes, which could be potentially annoying (and one sequence in particular overdoes it in my opinion), but it does effectively convey the chaos and disorientation that the characters must be feeling in those situations.
The film starts off with a tense and claustrophobic prologue set inside a farmhouse at the time of the original outbreak depicted in the first film. Then it skips to 28 weeks later, when the outbreak has subsided and a repopulation program is underway, starting with the quarantined Isle of Dogs in London. It's an engrossing and well-orchestrated set up, and when everything inevitably goes pear-shaped it doesn't follow the predictable pattern that might be expected. The first film's selling point was the depiction of a deserted London, but after the narrative left the city I felt that it went downhill. 28 Weeks Later has the benefit of being nearly entirely set in the urban environment, and it makes superb use of the surroundings with numerous exciting (and bloody) set-pieces, including grotesquely hilarious use of a helicopter and a creepy walk through a dark tube station seen solely through a rifle's night vision scope. It could be criticised as lacking much of a plot, because once the carnage begins it just becomes a string of action scenes as the characters travel across the city, but the atmosphere and intensity are excellent and easily compensate. The cast are very solid too, with Robert Carlyle playing a sympathetic but flawed father and Rose Byrne a US military doctor (sporting a flawless American accent). Even the two young actors playing Carlyle's son and daughter convince.
Ultimately all these components fall into place to make 28 Weeks Later a sequel that is in my estimation considerably better than its predecessor. Thanks to its decision to feature a completely new cast of characters and a storyline generally unrelated to the original, it also works as a great film in its own right.
The summary
28 Weeks Later is a tense, engrossing, unpredictable and just plain entertaining horror thriller. Bring on 28 Months Later.
