He on a Rampage!28 Days Later is a rarity: a horror film with indie cred. Part of it was the involvement of the Trainspotting creative team of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, part of it was the grimy digital video, and part of it was just the fact that it was British, and therefore cool. The fact that the movie sustains a sense of nerve-racking suspense from start to finish sure doesn't hurt.
The sequel that was released on May 11, 28 Weeks Later, is just begging for a smackdown. Not only does it fail to feature any of the actors from the original, but neither Boyle or Garland are driving forces behind the camera. In fact, the credits list four screenwriters, and the directore, Spaniard Juan Carlos Fresnadilo, is essentially a hired gun on the project. This all spells shit-burger, but instead, 28 Weeks Later singlehandedly justifies the very idea of the film sequel.
Most Hollywood sequels follow a simple rule: more of the same, but bigger. 28 Weeks Later, on the other hand, is committed to expanding the rage-virus concept that made the first movie such a goddamn tease. Because it was such an "indie" guerrilla affair, 28 Days Later started when most of the people in England were already dead or Rage-ified. It's understandable: they didn't have the budget to shoot hordes of panicked Londoners at Paddington Station getting chomped by zombies. As a result, for all the kick-assery of 28 Days Later, the movie is essentially a tease. A suspenseful, scary, wildly entertaining tease, but a tease nonetheless. This here sequel is the thick, gooey money shot. Screaming crowds getting zombified, army dudes unloading machine guns into hordes of zombies, city blocks get leveled to destroy the infection, and there's a helicopter-zombie scene that outdoes a similiar scene in Grindhouse by several magnitudes of awesomeness. Also, the film is a far more pointed political commentary than the first one was. For all the talk about the "relevence" of Days, there really isn't that much of a political subtext, just a zeitgeist-capturing focus on anxiety related to disease and terrorism. Weeks, though, offers a consistent and well-developed allegory for the Iraq war.
In a stunning abdication of my responsibilities as a critic, I'm going to cite some jag-off from imdb.com for the following analogy: 28 Days Later: Alien::28 Weeks Later:Aliens
Score: 8.7
