military, whose snipers spy on the inhabitants as much as potential invaders. The place is a heavily guarded fortress with constant surveillance by the U.S. Joined by pockets of survivors, they are housed in high-rises on the Isle of Dogs in the east end of London. Six months after being declared safe from infection, Britain is being repopulated with evacuees and those lucky enough to have been away at the time of the outbreak. Zoe Saldana on How Nichelle Nichols Made Her Feel Safe to Play Uhura in 'Star Trek' For Entertainment Weekly's take, click here. ![]() "28 Weeks Later" is rated R and runs 99 minutes. They don't call them horror movies for nothing. The parallels with Iraq are so bald, they don't require spelling out - though it's interesting that London should play this world's-end role again, so soon after "Children of Men." Given the deeply cynical ending, you could twist this political allegory more ways than one, but fear would seem to be an appropriate response. ![]() In the movie's most powerful sequence, the security forces decide to give up the hopeless task of distinguishing between the rampaging infected and their terrified prey to shoot down everything that moves. Much more credible, unfortunately, is the way reconstruction efforts abruptly collapse as military containment degenerates into chaos. The action flows thick and fast, culminating in a genuinely scary descent into the pitch-black Underground (frightening enough at the best of times), but at close quarters the director's reliance on a murky palette and blurrily frenetic handheld camera slips from intentionally disorienting to downright confusing.Īll these problems collide in a far-fetched scene where a sentimental GI (Jeremy Renner) starts shooting his own guys to protect the children. The movie provides an apocalyptic chill with images such as poison gas drifting past Westminster at dawn, or the Docklands being firebombed.Īdmittedly, the film has its share of traditional B-movie detriments too: sketchy performances, implausible narrative short cuts, and only nominal emotional investment.Įven with the family fissures running through this story, Fresnadillo fails to flesh out the humanity in his characters in the way that Boyle managed. "28 Weeks Later" combines traditional B-movie virtues - economy, invention, sinewy narrative spine - with the eerily resonant spectacle of a 21st-century metropolis stripped of its citizenry. With Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland otherwise engaged on the forthcoming sci-fi epic "Sunshine," sequel duties have been entrusted to Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlo Fresnadillo, whose only previous feature was the eye-catching thriller "Intacto."įresnadillo proves a shrewd choice. At 12, her brother Andy (the even more splendidly named Mackintosh Muggleton) is Britain's youngest resident. Tammy (the splendidly named Imogen Poots) is a teenager with pale, wary eyes. Here Dan (Robert Carlyle) is reunited with his two kids. So the quarantine has been lifted and refugees are being sent to the Isle of Dogs, a safe zone in the heart of London's financial district secured by the U.S. With no more human flesh to cannibalize, the infected have starved to death. Too efficient for its own good, the epidemic has long since extinguished itself. (CNN) - "28 Days Later," a zombie movie on speed, pictured the United Kingdom as a desolate wasteland just a month after a homicidal virus ("Rage") entered the general population.Īlthough the low-budget hit from "Trainspotting" director Danny Boyle ended on a note of muted hope, none of the original characters have survived for "28 Weeks Later," which picks up this localized doomsday scenario several months later.
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