Brains, brains, use your brains

28 WEEKS LATER

Compared to the first, 28 Weeks Later is bigger, faster and much gorier. After a terrifying opening sequence, the film settles into the aftermath of the events in the first film. American troops have been drafted in to oversee the gradual repopulation of Britain. But, as you can guess, things don’t go exactly to plan and another outbreak of the virus eventually ensues.

28 Weeks Later is an entirely different beast to Danny Boyles low key original. A heftier budget this time round allows events to take place on a much larger scale, with more infected and a much higher body count. There are some really big scares (at one point my popcorn nearly went in the air!) and a number of scenes were so disgusting that I actually had to look away.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the superfast editing though. Sometimes it was hard to make out exactly what was going on (though it did add to the overall this sense of confusion and panic during the crowd scenes, so it may have been intentional!).

The big let down was the complete disconnection with the characters. With 28 Days I quickly latched onto the protagonists and cared what fate they suffered, but 28 Weeks glosses over the characters and the film suffers because of it. Beyond the running and screaming, most of the actors have little to work with.

While nowhere as near good as the original, 28 Weeks Later is a worthy sequel and well worth a look, especially if you can experience it in the pitch dark of the cinema :D