Last night as I sat down and watch 28 Weeks Later, it isn't another zombie movie but don't think I'm trying to low ball it although its not quite there with its predecessor reason why I only gave it 6.5 but its a movie worth watching. It's a continuation of 28 Days Later, which was so good in 2002 and although it's been almost 10 years this sequel really holds up. As it is 2007, I come back to this movie in 2024 and I appreciate how well it was made, again it was great but its just not quite there, at least for me, we all have different taste and I might watch it again so in case I didn't catch some details. With the first one having Danny Boyle behind the camera, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was simply going to have to fill some big shoes but he somehow managed to create something that is familiar and fresh at the same time, they just did something really special with the same intense feeling from the first movie and added their own twist to it.
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The movie does have an intense opening sequence that sets the tone for the rest of the close to two hours that the movie last. Six months in after this Rage virus outbreak that turned Britain into this wasteland and we meet Don, played by Robert Carlyle, who is trapped in this farmhouse with his wife and a couple of other survivors. This moment is when the infected attack and Don has to make this gut decision to save himself at the expense of his wife, haunts the rest of the movie, it's not just about zombies running around, it is about the choices we make when we are scared and what those choices do to us later. At this moment into the movie I was like NO WAY he left her behind, after watching this scene, plus it was filmed with a shaky cam and the chaos, it really puts you right in the middle of it all and Carlyle really makes you feel every bit of his character's fear and guilt.
Let me get into the main story after I already throw out how shocking this movie starts. When NATO forces have secured parts of London and are trying to repopulate it with survivors. The first wave of people coming back are Don’s kids, Tammy and Andy, and that’s where things become complicated. We don't know what they've got, but the military got this whole secure zone set up called District One and you can tell from the get go that it's not going to last long. It's all really tense because you know it's all going to fall apart and when it does, it's going to be bad, consider the amount of infected people, its always the same story how no matter how high walls are, zombies always get around somehow its that rage and energy that drives them into doing what ever its needed even if that is destroying themself.
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Back in the day when this movies came out it was a really interesting journey that takes you through what happens when you try to rebuild after a disaster like this. It's not about surviving anymore, it's about trying to get back to normal but how do you do that when the threat’s still out there? and lets be realistic hundreds if not thousands in a place as populated as London. The presence of military intermediately plant this idea of safety in your brain but in reality it never is, military never outnumber the zombies and not even with nukes can control them as its a virus its not just a group of people infected, it keeps spreading. It all will start to go to hell when the kids sneak out to see their old home and it’ll remind us of how fragile this whole system is and how a single decision can bring everything down.
Some of the things that I recognize from this movie is how well it does to keep the balance between action and horror mix with other themes about family, survival and people who will do anything when they are push to the limit, say how Don told "C'ya" to his wife. Different than the first movie this one goes more into the story of a broken family and what happens when we make bad choices, and it gets VERY VERY bad for Don because instead of owning his mistake he decides to take the easy route with his children and lie to them, reason why it all goes to hell for him, when his children sneak out to visit their old place.
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This is a sequel that really shows you how you can take a successful formula and build on it without copying what came before. We're still dealing with the infected that are running around, causing chaos, but now we're looking at it from a different angle, the military's involved, people are trying to rebuild. They took the original concept and did the same thing, well this is the OG as "Fear The Walking Dead", they did like their own spin off but as a sequel, they mostly thought we don’t want to just try to recreate the same story. The virus itself hasn't changed, it's still the same thing that turns people into these rage filled monsters in seconds but now there is more data about the virus and that's what makes this movie different from other zombie movies 28 Days Later.
They didn't use too much CGI, which probably is why it still looks good and the makeup and effects they used still hold up today. The infected in this movie are even more terrifying than they were in the first one, they also seem to be faster plus there are more of them, now we know what they can do and how fast it can all go to shit. Even with the creation of District One, it's absolute anarchy at its core all around and they still move and attack in ways that are very random, plus there still the presence of the survivors who at times are more dangerous than the infected.
28 Weeks Later is a worth watching sequel and a decent movie that just as the first one took a great concept but only use it on its favor to create a different story with the same backdrop. Now that I have rewatch it got to say its a movie worth buying for my collection. It’s got enough connections to the first movie to be part of the same world but it’s its own thing with the same take on the outbreak story. The acting, particularly Robert Carlyle, really makes the emotional damage to anyone watching from the start, his bad desicions, web of lies of everything that happens to him basically and while some of the military characters might be a little too predictable, the main cast does a great job. Given how well this one turned out I wonder why they jumping from 28 Weeks Laster to 28 Years Later, I would have to look this up since in 2007 I was not much into movies as I am now, they have a pretty high bar to clear with the upcoming movie that its been said not to be a direct sequel and probably another spin off type of movie like 28 Weeks Later did, but I'm 100% interested to see where they take the story next.
