Tried and tested

28 Weeks Later
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Writers: Kurtzman

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau Jr, Robert Carlyle
Genres:  Horror / Sci-Fi
Rating: 18
Running Time: 98 minutes
Dana Cinema 9  at  12 noon, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm, 8pm, 10pm, 12 MN

The grisly 28 Weeks Later jettisons the director, cast, and recurring characters from the original film – Danny Boyle’s 2003 nightmare vision – and keeps only the franchise’s dynamic plot device: a rage virus that, in seconds, turns unsuspecting citizens into violent zombies.
It’s an effective way to wipe the slate clean before more blood is splattered across it.
Spanish film-maker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo structures his picture less like a conventional sequel and more like a “next chapter” in the horror saga, which might explain why this fresh, energised, and clever installment works better than it should.
If you can’t recall the details of Days, don’t fear.
Title cards re-educate us on the first film’s happenings, which shadowed a coma patient waking up to an apocalyptic London decimated by the aforementioned disease.
Seven months after those actions, portions of the evacuated city have been decontaminated and prepped for reconstruction. People who ran for the hills are returning, slowly.
Carnage lures crowds to zombie pictures such as these, but Weeks excels when it explores deeper human reactions to the constricting situations created by the deadly infections.
- Sean O’Connell