28 WEEKS LATER: A Worthy Sequel
 Great Britain has been overrun. Cities that aren’t deserted are full of corpses. In the aftermath of the rage virus as seen in Danny Boyle’s brilliant 28 DAYS LATER, the sun seems to have pretty well set on England. There are a few people still alive; as the scene opens on the sequel, 28 WEEKS LATER, Don Harris (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) are holed up in a little cottage with a few others, hoping to outlast the infected. But, they’re soon discovered, and in the ensuing carnage, Don escapes, leaving Alice behind.
Now, 28 weeks have elapsed since the infection began, and the U.S. Army has come in, leading a NATO mission to reclaim England. Among the refugees returning are Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton; no really, that’s his name), Don’s kids who were trapped in Spain when things went down. Don meets them and breaks the bad news, and they try to get on with life. However, the kids head back to their house in violation of quarantine and find something interesting: their mom, who’s infected but shows no symptoms. She’s a carrier, something nobody gets a chance to tell Don before he gets all smoochy with her. Now, the kids are on the run from a new surge of the infected, and a soldier not too keen on shooting civilians (Jeremy Renner), a compassionate army doc (Rose
28 WEEKS LATER had some big shoes to fill, and it doesn’t quite manage to do the job. The characters are more stock than the last bunch, and some of the immediacy and chills are robbed
That’s not to say, however, the movie isn’t good. The movie is fast-paced and nicely shot, with a couple of unnerving set pieces (one seen entirely through a sniper’s night scope comes to mind). The actors do what they can, with Renner and Boyle especially standing out as the two truly sympathetic American characters (the fact that
The DVD isn’t a deluxe package, but it’s not too shab
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