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28 WEEKS LATER Send This Review to a Friend
There are various kinds of film genres. Let’s just say that “28 Weeks Later” belongs to the obnoxious genre. Unlike its past apocalyptic predecessor, “28 Days Later,” this opus is bereft of any semblance of wit or value. It is an unending binge of bloodshed as victims of a virus that instills rage rampage against anyone in sight by chewing at them, or bash their own heads against windows and walls in a state of madness. The emperor may be naked, but that doesn’t prevent fans of this sort of stuff seeing the carnage as allegory.
This indulgence is directed by Joan Carlos Fresnadillo from a screenplay by Rowan Joffe, Enrique López-Lavigne, Jesus Olmo and Fresnadillo. The story involves Robert Carlyle as a husband and father under brutal attack when the war against infection in decimated Britain has supposedly been won, giving way to a time of rebuilding under the watchful eyes of the U.S. Army. (Iraq—get it?) But the virus is alive and well.
Don (Carlyle) saves his own butt and runs off leaving his wife to face the attack. Later, their children turn up, and disillusioned with dad when they learn what he did, they have to run for heir own lives in the face of the growing vicious attacks from the enraged. It is a revealing mark of the utter one-track bloodiness of the film that one can’t even work up sympathy for children being pursued by madmen.
The constant horror is so numbingly disgusting that any meaningfulness or even perverse entertainment is drained from the work no matter how many sequences a film buff may think are technically accomplished. If this is your cup of blood, good luck. A Fox Atomic and DNA Films release.
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