28 Weeks Later

There were genuinely excellent moments in this film both visually and storytelling wise. There were also embarrassingly bad plot developments (I hate when a person becomes a zombie or infected and then comes back as a zombie to haunt his family) and clunky scenes involving slow motion or too much herky jerky camera movement for my taste.

Still the scenes in the dark are really eerie. As are the overhead shots, the firebombing of London, the gray mist of the poison gas enveloping the city, running from the infected in the countryside, and an awesome helicopter as weapon scene. Also, the ending is a clever way to set up yet another sequel.

The movie is set during the reconstruction of England. The infected have all died out and people are returning back to their homes. However, when an infected survivor is found with no symptoms of the disease, all things inevitably go to hell quite quickly. The occupying American army can't control things and decide to exterminate everyone, the infected and non-infected. So the good guys have to run from the infected while also dodging bullets from the American army.

On another note, Harold Perrineau and Idris Elba (Stringer Bell on The Wire who once again has to hide his accent to play an American in a movie set in London no less!) are always welcome faces to see in any format.

This and The Host would be a good double feature of two genre pictures that are both highly critical of American involvement in a foreign country. Nice.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
2007
DVD