MOVIE REVIEW: 28 Weeks Later

There are two things I am afraid of if and when a zombie outbreak occurrs. One would be that they run fast. I don't just mean fast either. I mean gold medal, running from the cops, eat your ass fast. The second being the United States military. Man, I'd be fucked in this situation. Even if I managed to outrun the infected, I would probably get sniped by a good old boy with an itchy trigger finger. Such is the case with "28 Weeks Later," the sequel to the excellent "28 Days Later." The sequel manages to excell in just about every area as opposed to the original, not to mention it is the best in the genre.

The film begins with survivors holding up in a small cottage. Two of the members include Don (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice. After a boy on the run appears at the door all hell breaks loose. The infected barge their way in and just put a monkey wrench in the survivor's program. Nothing like getting your throat chewed out to ruin your day. So Don and Alice almost escape when an infected comes between them. Don can either risk his own life to "maybe" save his wife, or get the fuck out and save his own ass. Don makes the logical choice and takes off, leaving everyone to die shitty horrible deaths. Now ladies, I am all for defending my woman against a crazy person, or just your average mugger, but the minute the dude is growling, chewing and running, your ass is on your own. So then we jump ahead six months or so and London has been declared a safe zone. The United States military has come in to save the day and make sure the infection is dead for good. It would certainly appear that way since the last infected person died a few months prior. So then we meet Don's children Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), who were away at a private school when all of this occurred. So Don and the children reunite and he tells them the story of how he tried to save his wife, but to no avail. In classic dipshit fashion the children sneak out of quarantined London and to their old house to gather old photos so as not to forget their mother. Upon reaching the house, they discover Alice alive and well. Weird, huh? Oh it gets better. Turns out she has the virus, but cannot show symtoms. She is simply a carrier and can spread the disease through blood and saliva. After a quick kiss and make up between Don and Alice, Don quickly contracts the virus and becomes the first infected in months. Then it's wham, bam thank you ma'am I think I'll gouge your eyes out with my thumbs. Then it is code red as the infection spreads and London is once again fucked. Think that is bad? Well since the US military loses control of the situation, they begin to kill everyone, infected or not. So not only are the children, a sniper named Doyle (Jeremy Renner) and a medic (Rose Byrne) on the run from the hundreds of newly infected, they also must avoid the US military who is all about shooting first.This was a brutal movie. There pulled no punches here and kept it all in. Want to see people getting body parts bitten off? Sure. Want to see an infected gouge out his wife's eyes with his thumbs? You got it. It was in the brutality that this movie scared the shit out of me. There was a true sense of isolation and that things might be okay for awhile. Then BAM! It all goes to hell and you start to think to yourself, "Shit, nobody is safe." Nobody indeed. I promise you that this is no happy Hollywood movie. People get fucked up, and it might not be who you'd expect.

The performance by Robert Carlyle made the first third of the movie. Here is a guy who is an everyman. He is not a hero by any standards. He simply did what he had to do by leaving his wife, and you can tell it has eaten him up (pun there. Did you see it?) every single day of his life. He made a choice. One that nobody else could understand unless they had been in the same situation.

The film does indeed end on a much heavier note as opposed to the original. I was one of those people who liked the first movie, but not the ending. A happy ending just isn't what these movies are all about. This film shows up just how uncontrollable this virus is, and how it may never be stopped. That is, until we get the already in theory "28 Months Later." As I already stated above, this movie was brutal. It is leaps and bounds ahead of the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, which had been my favorite "zombie" film to date before this film. "28 Weeks Later" was just so intense and crazy that you may never again accept the slow moving pussy zombies that frequent the Romero films.