28 Weeks Later

I TRIED TO KEEP THIS REVIEW SPOILER FREE AND I THINK FOR THE MOST PART IT IS, BUT JUST INCASE THERE IS SOMETHING THAT MAY HINTS TOWARDS SOMETHING.... CHECK OUT THE RATING AND LAST PARAGRAPH ONLY. Survival, survival, survival. That's all this movie is about. It's about making sure your not the one who gets bitten by the infected. It's about you shooting down a bunch of innocent people if you think only one of them might have the disease in an attempt to stop it spreading. It's about killing your mother, brother, father, girlfriend or a complete stranger the second they become infected. Or hell even running away and bailing out to save your own skin even if you have the opportunity to save your family members. 28 Weeks Later hits all the buttons of the zombie movie genre but at the same time improves on it in so many ways. This may well be the most significant movie in the genre since the original Dawn of the Dead in 1978. I'm absolutely serious. You are simply not prepared for this movie. I sure as hell wasn't. I went into it with much higher expectations than I held for the movie originally but still I was just hoping for an entertaining yarn and if it was just as good as 28 Days Later, then I would come out thinking it was worth the trip. It was sure as hell worth the trip alright. This movie is incredible. You know all the good bits of 28 Days Later that all came at the first half of the movie? Well this film has that going for it all of the way through and actually betters it. The film has a purpose, it has a logical narrative and it has characters who are fully fleshed out and interesting. 28 Weeks Later should become the blueprint of how you take an average movie and turn it into something spectacular for the sequel. The basic setting of the flick is that 28 weeks after the events of the last film and the infection is seemingly gone. People are starting to come back to England and around 15 thousand people have been allowed back into parts of London. Only some parts mind you, as not everywhere has been deemed fully safe just yet. I'm not going to tell you anything more about the plot apart from that the third act of this movie is so good it makes you want to scream out loud "YES!". Finally somebody has got the last act of a film right... far too many movies fall down at that point, especially recently... I'm looking at you Danny Boyle with your movie Sunshine (ironically the director of the original 28 Days Later also). Throughout the film there's very little remorse shown for anyone and I began to feel incredibly uncomfortable watching this flick, far more so than any movie George A. Romero made in this genre. These "zombies" are like god damn super humans, they are terrifying. You can't really out run them and instead of just biting you or killing you instantly, they rip you limb for limb or they beat you down with a bloody pipe until you can't breathe. The best thing this movie does and it's something that a lot of the good survival movies are taking up these days... is that any character can die at any given moment. Not one person is safe. The one's you think are likely to be safe, a couple of minutes later will be turned into a flesh eating killer. The performances in the movie are all strong (apart from the male kid who can't act) with Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Renner and Rose Byrne being the stand-outs. I don't really want to say any more because it's still a few days until this movie is out but it's films like this which still leave me hope for the horror genre. The movie will stay with you... that god damn music they use for the film matches the atmosphere and visual imagery of the film so well. I wanna see more of this series... keep them coming guys.

rating:4.5

28 Weeks Later is so much better than the original. It's a brutal and nasty zombie-esque infection movie that pulls absolutely no punches and gives you one of those cinema experiences that really make you scream, squeal and cheer. If your not a fan of blood and being made to jump, avoid the film but for everyone else I haven't seen a horror movie as good as this in years.... easily the best film of 2007 so far. YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS.