{"id":12117,"date":"2025-06-19T10:35:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T14:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12117"},"modified":"2025-06-19T10:35:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T14:35:15","slug":"28-weeks-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/06\/19\/28-weeks-later\/","title":{"rendered":"28 Weeks Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"28 Weeks Later<\/strong> (2007)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fox Atomic\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence and gore, language, some sexuality\/nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, E.L. Lavigne and Jesus Olmo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Murphy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Enrique Chediak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 11, 2007 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Imogen Poots, Mackintosh Muggleton, Catherine McCormack, Idris Elba.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $28.6M (US)\/$64.2M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Neither director Danny Boyle nor writer Alex Garland are involved in 28 Weeks Later<\/strong>, a sequel to their truly settling post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later, and it shows. It\u2019s directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) who also co-wrote the screenplay with three others. It\u2019s a more conventional film this time around as it wasn\u2019t shot on video like the first one. It doesn\u2019t have the same sense of immediacy, but it still puts you right in the thick of the \u201czombie\u201d (i.e. infected person) action with a handful of uninfected persons being chased by rage-fuelled beings and the military sent to the UK to maintain order.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The main thing that sets 28 Weeks Later<\/strong> apart from its predecessor is its protagonist, a father of two named Don (Carlyle, Trainspotting). He\u2019s not a likable guy. When we first meet him, he\u2019s holed up in a house with his wife Alice (McCormack, Braveheart) and four other survivors of the initial outbreak. When infected people attack, Don runs off leaving his wife behind. He doesn\u2019t even try to save her. He\u2019s ultimately the only one who gets away. Then he tries to cover up his act of cowardice by lying to his two kids about the circumstances of their mother\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n

\u00a028 weeks after the outbreak, it\u2019s decided that it\u2019s safe to start bringing people back to the UK in order to restart society. The new arrivals include Don\u2019s teenage daughter Tammy (Poots, Fright Night) and young son Andy (Muggleton) who were in a refugee camp in Spain while everything was going on. They\u2019re sent to District One, a safe zone heavily guarded by NATO forces led by General Stone (Elba, The Suicide Squad). They, along with all the other new arrivals, are ordered not to venture outside of D1. Of course, the siblings disregard the order.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tammy and Andy, wanting to collect a few of their personal belongings, make their way to their old house where a shocking surprise awaits them. Alice, presumed dead, is still alive and uninfected by the Rage Virus. She\u2019s taken into custody where military scientist Scarlet (Byrne, Try) attempts to find out why she\u2019s not affected. It could be that she carries the cure. Of course, something goes wrong and the virus comes back with a vengeance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Stone, unable to contain the virus, orders D1 to be firebombed. The few survivors include Tammy and Andy, Scarlet and Delta Force sniper Sgt. Doyle (Renner, The Town) who refused to follow Stone\u2019s orders to open fire on any moving target, infected or not. Together, they try to make it safety. Unfortunately, Don survives the bombing too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shortly after it came out on DVD, I loaned my copy of 28 Weeks Later<\/strong> to a friend who later described it as a \u201ctrain wreck\u201d. He specifically pointed out the scene where a helicopter pilot uses the rotor blades to kill a bunch of zombies. He said it would never work in real life and went to explain why. WAIT A MINUTE! Does that even matter? Are we looking for realism here? Are we not watching it to be entertained? Yes, the first movie had a stronger sense of realism, but where is it written that the sequel must follow suit? Can\u2019t it be its own movie? Sure, it can! And it is. I think the scene in question is cool. It would have been even cooler if Fresnadillo went with practical gore effects rather than CGI. I get that it\u2019s easier to go with the latter for certain scenes, but it still takes something away from the overall experience.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once again, the zombie attack scenes are wildly overedited. I get that Fresnadillo is trying to make the audience feel like they\u2019re in the thick of it by presenting them as they\u2019d be seen by the victims. He wants to make the attacks look fiercer as well. He succeeds to some extent, but it would nice to have a better sense of geography and relative position. Also, the whole idea of running zombies is contrary to the rules of the genre according to George A. Romero. Who wasn\u2019t freaked out by the soulless reanimated ghouls in the original Night of the Living Dead? They might have moved slowly, but they would eventually corner their victims and do their thing. It\u2019s still freaky after more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in 28 Weeks Later<\/strong> is pretty much what you\u2019d expect. Everybody does a fine job. It\u2019s not Oscar-level stuff, but it works for the purposes of this movie. Carlyle does a decent job as the guilt-ridden dad whose display of remorse is a classic case of \u201ctoo little, too late\u201d. Poots shows spunk and resolve as the teen heroine whose sole concern is protecting her little brother. Elba isn\u2019t in it too much, but he\u2019s good as the military leader with the power to destroy everything he surveys.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here\u2019s the bottom line. 28 Weeks Later<\/strong> is a sufficiently entertaining zombie horror flick. It\u2019s definitely better than any given installment of the Resident Evil franchise. It\u2019s not Romero, but I doubt anybody will ever be able to top what he accomplished in the zombie subgenre. Fresnadillo seems to realize this and doesn\u2019t even try to outdo perfection. What he delivers is flawed but good.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Weeks Later (2007)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fox Atomic\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence and gore, language, some sexuality\/nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, E.L. Lavigne and Jesus Olmo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Murphy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Enrique Chediak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 11, 2007 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Imogen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/28-Weeks-Later-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12117"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12128,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12117\/revisions\/12128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}