Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10898 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-09-10
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Put that cynical look away, because the critics were right. 28 Weeks Later really is a sequel that delivers, that expands on the original, and in many ways even surpasses it.

Faithful in many ways to the enjoyable, if derivative, 28 Days Later, this sequel sees original director Danny Boyle (who went off to make Sunshine instead) replaced by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo behind the camera(director of the excellent Spanish film Intacto). And Fresnadillo is an inspired choice, putting together a film that’s not bereft of flaws of its own, but one that proves to be an ambitious and surprisingly thought-provoking follow-up.

Many of the building blocks are the same. Primarily set over six months after the Rage virus engulfed Britain, turning many of its inhabitants into deadly zombie-esque creatures in the process, the film this time though sees the American military arrive to help sort things out. Only things quickly go wrong, allowing Fresnadillo to mould a pacey, exciting and desperately enjoyable action carnival, that’s got a little more under the surface.

Grounded by Robert Carlyle as one of the survivors of the virus, replete with his kids in tow, 28 Weeks Later skilfully navigates the labyrinth of sequel hell and really, really delivers. What’s more, it opens up the enticing possibility of a further sequel, and on the evidence of this film, that’s a very welcome thought.

28 Weeks Later, like its predecessor, isn’t a film for the faint-hearted, and wholesome family entertainment it absolutely isn’t. But it’s a very good, energetic horror movie, and far, far better than you might've originally given it credit for. --Jon Foster

Synopsis
Danny Boyle's 2003 hit 28 DAYS LATER receives the sequel treatment in 28 WEEKS LATER. Few elements from the first film remain--actor Cillian Murphy doesn't return, and Boyle and screenwriter/novelist Alex Garland take producer credits this time out. In their places step director/co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (INTACTO) and actor Robert Carlyle (TRAINSPOTTING), who bring the original story to its next logical step. The zombies (again referred to as ‘the infected’) from the first film have died out and England is ready for repopulation. The American military are slowly bringing British citizens back to London, where a heavily guarded community is picking up the pieces and trying to return to normal life. Carlyle plays Don, a man who has lost his wife but is reunited with his children, Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots), near the start of Fresnadillo's film. The two kids soon escape from the heavily guarded community, go off searching for their childhood home, and discover that mum might not be quite as dead as they originally thought. Chaos follows, with the sadistic military and the forlorn survivors battling both each other and ‘the infected.’
Fresnadillo apes much of Boyle's style from the original film, shooting in rapidly edited sequences that cause plenty of blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. A pounding soundtrack helps enliven the scenes with ‘the infected’, and an abundance of swooping aerial shots highlight the desolate London landscape. A few minor sub-plots emerge, Fresnadillo offers sly commentary on the military's trigger-happy tendencies, and the film ends up somewhere in between zombie fare such as George A. Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD and dystopian visions of the future such as Alfonso Cuaron's CHILDREN OF MEN.

Customer Reviews

Nearly as good as 28 Days Later

'28 Weeks Later' is a surprising decent sequel that supplies all the scares and suspense of the original and some great special effects that capture a great post-apocalyptic London.

The film starts with Don Harris (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice who are hiding with a small band of survivors in a remote, boarded-up farmhouse. Their kids, Andy and Tammy, are well out of harm's way at a remote boarding school, so Don and Alice's outlook for the future is decidedly bright until all hell breaks loose in the country and Don just barely manages to escape the clutches of the infected, leaving his wife to be apparently mauled to death by the "zombies".

Six months later, the Rage virus has spread throughout the UK. The United States Army has restored order and is repopulating the quarantined city of London and Don is reunited with his kids.

Andy and Tammy sneak out of the quarantined area to go back to their old home to pick up some possessions, only to allow a carrier of the Rage virus to enter the newly re-populated area of London and unknowingly reignites the spread of the deadly infection, wreaking havoc on the entire population.

The director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, has done a great job of recreating previous director, Danny Boyle's deserted London streets and has kept all the tense chase sequences and horror of the original and gave it a new twist by cutting off a lot of the city, making the film feel a lot more claustraphobic and chaotic. There's lots of completely terrifying scenes and the usual amount of gore, but this is a sequel that's definitely worthy of it's prequel. I hear that another sequel is due for production soon, following on from 28 Weeks Later's shocking ending, so hopefully the trilogy will end up being one of the best in British horror films, as the first 2 certainly have got what it takes to give it that status.

Brilliant
I wrote this review the same day as watching 28 Weeks at the cinema. I'd heard some pessimistic things about the film before going in, and given that sequels often deteriorate in quality as a franchise progresses, I feared the worst.

Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who is new to the franchise, quickly puts paid to any fears that the 28[...] saga has been taken from Danny Boyle and delivered into the wrong hands. 28 Weeks maintains the frantic brutality and, if anything, ramps up the gloom and quintessential British grime of its predecessor.

Taking place... err... 28 weeks after the initial outbreak, the story shifts focus to a completely new set of characters, headed by a perfectly cast Robert Carlisle, a husband and father of two. Within minutes of the film's start, we follow his frantic escape from a remote cottage, which becomes beseiged by the ubiquitous infected. His flight takes him to London, where his children are, and where a US-led NATO force has begun reconstruction of the entirely depopulated country within the boundaries of a heavily militarised safe-zone.

What could easily been yet another awful big screen propaganda piece for the American military is much more cleverly handled. The film wisely portrays the US armed forces as limited, vulnerable and ultimately unable to cope with the blitzkrieg spread of a new outbreak of the virus within its own compound. Comparisons with the current situation in Iraq are unavoidable.

It's always refreshing to watch a large-scale, modern film when it's set in the relative familiarity of a city like London. A post-apocalyptic scenario is doubly effective for a British viewer when the Gherkin and St. Paul's are on the skyline. 28 Weeks reuses John Murphy's mournful, simple guitar riffs to complete the grim ambience, and we're right back in the nightmare world of blood-spitting, shrieking zombies-on-speed that made the first film a cult classic.

I think 28 Weeks Later is an even better film than 28 Days. It's everything that the stupendously, unflinchingly dreadful Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse - another zombie film franchise sequel - should have been in several ways and more. One or two of the action set pieces are a little too showy and unconvincing, but don't let that put you off.

Buy, beg, borrow or steal, but make sure you see it.

Not Quite Rage, More a Bittersweet Ennui
Theres no denying, the first 10 minutes of this is absolutely blistering. Rage isnt the only contagion, as the audience is forced to share the adrenaline fueled panic of a bedraggled group of survivors in their boarded up farmhouse refuge, as the infected smash their way in and ruin the atmos comprehensively. Robert Carlyle's character faces the ultimate 'what would you do?' challenge and decides discretion is the better part of valour.

Unfortunately, from there the whole thing nosedives catastrophically. We jump forward 6 months to an (apparently) post 'Rage' abandoned, corpse strewn Britain. The 'infected' have postponed death by thirst long enough to starve to death, having presumably followed the natural impulse to drink water, if not to eat. The US Army (under the guise of NATO) is overseeing the return of British refugees to the Isle of Dogs. Theres no need for this plot device. Bring the British Army back from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Isle of Man, the Shetlands, or wherever they've been while Rage burned itself out on the mainland. The first film didnt need such a sop to the US cinema audience and it was still a hit in the states. It would actually have made the film more interesting to have had the foreign military being French, Dutch and/or Irish, seeing as, being our most immediate neighbours, they would obviously have been most keen to enforce the quarantine.

The Irish situation would be very interesting in this scenario actually, I could see some kind of military evacuation to Northern Ireland once things spiralled out of control. Anyway, thats another film, I'll write it when I have a minute. The main point with this one though, that the plot is just ludicrous. An admittedly clever idea of a survivor with natural immunity is woven into a sequence of events in which a dozen or so people each successively make the worst possible decision they can in the circumstances, compounding to result in a new outbreak and a tourist trip through London as our junior heroes jog past the Tower of London via Buckingham Palace to Wembley Stadium, to escape the wrath of the newly infected, and the US military (who have decided to kill everyone, infected or not). Its a real shame, I was looking forward to this, and it didnt need to be this bad. With a bit more thought it could have lived up to the promise of the opening.