In 2003, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later helped put a new, rabidly charged spin on
the post-apocalyptic zombie sub-genre, telling the story of an English coma
patient (Cillian Murphy) who awakens to find what on the surface appears to be an
eerily empty London in fact overrun by victims of a “rage virus.” Shot in
gritty fashion on digital video for only $8 million, the film was a tremendous summer
success for distributor Fox Searchlight, who used a canny grassroots marketing
plan and drew upon bubbling, post-September 11 world anxiety to evoke dreadful parallel
delight (unspeakable violence delivered with an unnerving fervor) and scare up $45
million domestically and another $37.5 million overseas. Opening at 1,100 more
venues than its predecessor, 28 Weeks Later pulled in $10 million this past weekend, just under
the 2003 film, but on par with zombie maestro George Romero’s 2005 entry Land of the Dead, and good for
second place at the box office behind Spider-Man 3’s sophomore frame. The movie’s creative execution,
though, represents a headlong plunge off the first film’s fairly reasoned
cliff, and may jeopardize future franchise viability if justifiably sour word-of-mouth
proves as contagious as the movie’s viral plague.

28 Weeks Later is a
disappointment both as a narrative continuation of its forerunner and merely as its
own stand-alone thrill ride. Its putative emotional centerpiece — a sequence
involving a mass escape which turns into a military shooting gallery — is a
piece of cheap, empty theater, exacerbated by thunderously illogical staging. And though marked by certain political allusions — talk of re-populated “green zones” and
the like, all patrolled by American-led armed NATO forces — the film does little to
interweave these into the story in a significant and meaningful way.

The very best that can be said of 28 Weeks Later is that it
grabs hold of a frenetic pace and doesn’t let go, but Fresnadillo
utilizes too many cuts in his editing scheme, and the movie is a bungled mess
of misinformed plot strands and poorly delineated spatial
relationships. Action scenes often literally make no sense,
and so they become merely wearying instead of tension- or
anxiety-provoking. On the plus side, composer John Murphy’s
synth-driven score conveys a lilting sense of emo-doom. It clings to
you, even if nothing else about the movie does. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.