thomas4cinema

"28 Days later" was a very enjoyable film for most of its running time, even though I slightly lost interest when thr group arrived at the soldiers’s camp outside Manchester (or was it Birmingham?) and the role of evil-doer was switched to feature the army from then on. While the twist as such was a very smart one, it was not too well executed, and the soldiers were left to be caricatures the slaughtering of which left nothing but cheers.

"28 Weeks later" is smarter than that. Apparently, the new director had the same impression from the first installment and tries to overcome it be allocating more shares of humanity to all the parties. The result is next to splendid. Starting with the opening sequence that puts all potential heroism to rest in a sequence of fierce survival instinct, to the shooting of the re-settlement, where the helicopter flights over the stark-naked, empty city of London bear resemblance to the troops getting into New York in "Escape from New York" – with all the uncomfortable feelings associated, this cannot be right…  brilliant photography also from the ground: be it in the blunt atmosphere of the Metropolis-like residential island they established, or in the still rubbish-drenched, corpse-filled old parts of the city, where the absence of traffic and people’s noise is maybe the most irritating thing.

There are flaws, certainly, in particular the costant presence of a father who is not supposed to be there anymore, but that is made up by atmosphere and action, with a gruelling scene of (justified) mass hysteria in a dark parking garage and the wicked realisation that the snipers on the roof are loose and are now as dangerous as the rabid infected.

Very nice to see good horror films now and again!