28 Weeks Later

I watched 28 Weeks Later and I liked it. 3.5/5

The Sequel Nobody Expected… But It Goes Hard Anyway

Let’s be real. 28 Weeks Later had no business being as good as it is. It’s a sequel to a movie that basically reinvented the modern zombie genre, it swaps out the original director and cast, and it puts a military cleanup operation at the center of the story. On paper, this screams straight-to-DVD cash grab. And yet somehow, against the odds, it delivers one of the most brutal and relentless openings in any horror film of the 2000s.

If 28 Days Later was about loneliness and slow-burn dread, 28 Weeks Later is about velocity. It’s louder, meaner, and way more chaotic. It throws emotional stakes at you early, and then yanks the floor out from under them with no apology. The tone is colder, more cynical, and a little mean-spirited. But you know what? It works. Mostly.

That Opening Scene Though

We have to talk about the prologue. Robert Carlyle and Catherine McCormack play Don and Alice, hiding out in a remote cottage with a few survivors. Everything is going fine until it isn’t. The infected show up like a freight train. The attack is terrifying, kinetic, and completely out of control. Then Don makes a split-second decision that defines the entire emotional arc of the movie.

He leaves her behind.

It’s a gut-punch moment that sets the tone perfectly. No one is safe. Survival costs your soul. This is the film at its best—cruel, sharp, and soaked in dread.

A City of Ghosts

The film picks up after Britain has supposedly been cleansed of the Rage virus. The military, led by the ever-serious Idris Elba, is repopulating a quarantine zone in London. Families are returning. Everything feels sterile and hopeful in that creepy post-apocalyptic way, like an IKEA catalog dropped into Chernobyl.

Enter Don’s kids, Tammy and Andy, who sneak out of the safe zone because of course they do. What they find triggers a second outbreak, which—shocker—spreads like wildfire.

It’s a classic horror sequel move. Bigger outbreak, bigger budget, more blood. But what makes 28 Weeks Later stand out is its refusal to let anyone feel safe. This movie kills with zero hesitation. Beloved characters, soldiers, children. No one is off-limits.

Characters You Actually Care About (Kind Of)

Let’s be honest. The emotional stakes don’t hit quite as hard as in the first film. Don’s betrayal is a great setup, and Robert Carlyle sells his guilt and eventual transformation really well, but most of the characters feel more like types than people. Rose Byrne as Major Scarlet is the compassionate doctor with a conscience. Jeremy Renner as Doyle is the sniper with a heart of gold. They’re both solid, but not exactly deep.

The kids, Andy and Tammy, are mostly plot devices. They’re there to trigger events and give the movie some emotional scaffolding, but they aren’t particularly compelling on their own. That said, they do anchor the finale, which leans more into tragedy than triumph.

Infection in Broad Daylight

One of the things this sequel gets right is the sheer scope of the horror. Where 28 Days Later was intimate, 28 Weeks Later is expansive. There are scenes of citywide panic, military bombardments, snipers picking off civilians, and infected swarming through alleyways like locusts. It’s a vision of a world trying to rebuild itself only to fall apart even faster.

The cinematography is occasionally chaotic to the point of confusion. Some of the action scenes are so frantically edited they lose their impact. But there are moments where it absolutely works—especially a haunting underground scene where the characters fumble through total darkness, surrounded by the infected, with only night vision and the sound of breathing to guide them. It’s pure nightmare fuel.

Flawed, But Ferocious

For all its style and intensity, 28 Weeks Later never quite finds the emotional center that made the first film so haunting. It’s thrilling, yes. Brutal, absolutely. But it also feels a bit more hollow.

Still, as far as horror sequels go, this is one of the better ones. It expands the mythology, delivers some incredible set pieces, and keeps you on edge from start to finish. It’s the kind of film that knows exactly what it is and isn’t afraid to get ugly.

If 28 Days Later was the slow descent into madness, 28 Weeks Later is the full-body plunge into the fire. And for that, I respect it.

Our Score

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