28 Weeks Later

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 30, 2007

Five years after the release of director Danny Boyle’s science fiction thriller 28 Days Later (2002), the epidemic continues.

28 Weeks Later opened in U.S. theaters on May 11, seemingly just one more addition to this summer’s lengthy list of blockbuster sequels that includes Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Shrek the Third, and Live Free or Die Hard. Its performance was somewhat weak compared to those of its summer sequel rivals, grossing only $5,454,168 at the box office during its first weekend (whereas the third installment of Pirates earned $139,802,190 during its opening weekend).

Despite the mixed reviews circulating about the success of 28 Weeks Later’s attempt not only to mirror, but ultimately to surpass the thrilling suspense and eye-opening (or closing, depending on your feelings regarding blood-and-guts violence) bloodiness of its predecessor, this sequel delivers more than is promised by its “It All Begins Again” advertising campaign.

28 Weeks Later is a pseudo-post-apocalyptic thriller that presents audiences with a scenario of fast-paced devastation which, while slightly reminiscent of the 1995 science fiction thriller Outbreak (starring Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo), is startlingly and unsettlingly plausible in today’s world of scientific advances and international biological warfare threats.

The film is a brutal and exhaustively terrifying adrenaline rush replete not only with an excess of schizophrenic visual stimuli that ranges from the intense physical encounters of the “new arrivals” with “the infected”—filmed with cameras that shudder and move uncontrollably at an amazing speed—to close-up shots of the frighteningly red blood that oozes from the eyes, nose and mouths of the infected. The visual effects are further intensified by the film’s non-stop soundtrack, which constantly bombards audiences with massive explosions and military gunfire so loud that it seems to become embedded in the membrane of the viewer’s middle ear.

While 28 Days Later presented audiences with an unexpected level of bloody violence mixed with just the right amount of harrowing helplessness, it also appeased its viewers with a “happy ending” of sorts, one that promised an end to the infection and a degree of hope for the future. Alternatively, 28 Weeks Later kicks those feelings of anxiety and hopelessness felt by audiences watching 28 Days Later up a notch by presenting viewers not only with the return of the rage virus, but with a combination of desperate and impossibly bleak scenarios including the failure of U.S. military techniques for containment and sterilization and the inability of the film to establish a traditional hero figure able to survive within the diegetic world for more than thirty minutes (thus making narcissistic and voyeuristic identification virtually impossible).

Amidst its mouth-watering menu of pleasingly excessive and intense sensory stimuli, 28 Weeks Later does have one major downside involving the often blatantly thoughtless actions of the film’s two main characters, Tammy (Imogen Poots), and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton). These two children, the first allowed back into the entirely adult populated England apparently think that disobeying the direct orders of the United States military and purposefully leaving the clean, safe, disinfected “Area 1” to traverse the infected-corpse-ridden streets of London is a good idea. Fortunately, several of the film’s other important characters deliver believable performances, including in particular Jeremy Renner (S.W.A.T., 2003), who plays a U.S. military officer named Doyle.

For audiences who have seen other films that are overtly preoccupied with methods of containment and surveillance, such as Brazil (1985), or even The Truman Show (1998), the attempt in the film by the U.S. military to step in to sterilize and re-colonize England in “the best way possible”—as only Americans can—following the complete societal breakdown caused by the rage virus will certainly resonate as a familiar (and familiarly doomed) scenario. Of particular interest given the current political climate is the film’s emphasis on containment and militarism and the way in which these themes speak to the strong-armed foreign policy exhibited by the United States in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq over the past few years from a unique perspective: one that isn’t American.

The sequel to 28 Days Later, like many cinematic follow-up films, was not written or directed by any of the members of the original’s production team. In place of British director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 1996; A Life Less Ordinary, 1997; Alien Love Triangle, 2002), 28 Weeks Later came under the direction of writer-director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Linked, 1996; Intact, 2001). Despite this change, Fresnadillo was able to create a strong, entertaining sequel to 28 Days Later, a film that has developed somewhat of a cult following over the past five years. Whether the franchise will continue is unclear, but what is clear is the fact that this particular combination of writing and directing teams have managed to create two successful science fiction thrillers that will inevitably remain popular for years to come.

Read more articles by Paige MacGregor