Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Writers: Rowan Joffe and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Catherine McCormack, Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Rose Byrne, Imogene Poots, Mackintosh Muggleton

If you remember from the film 28 Day Later, a plague has infected Britain. A plague of rage, that once a victim is infected, they go on a rampage of murder and destruction. It was not necessary to be bitten, as it was with a normal Zombie, with Rage you could become infected through saliva, sweat, blood, or be being bitten.
By the end of 28 Days Later, you wondered what would happen if the plague got into the rest of the world.
But in 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the original film we are treated to a Britain under marshal law, guarded by a NATO force made up of largely the U.S. military. The streets are patrolled by Humvee's loaded with soldiers and snipers man the roofs around the 'safe zone' of London.
After six months, people are starting to come back to the city and are taking up residence, trying to rebuild their lives.
Into this mixture is Donald Harris (Robert Carlyle) and his two children. Donald has been waiting for months for his kids to return to London, and to him. As they take up residence in their new apartment, while they wait for a new home, Donald tells the children how their mother died during an attack.
But Donald has a secret.
The area known as the 'safe zone' is a secure section of London, and people are not permitted in the rest of the city. There is a danger of rats, packs of wild dogs (and when I heard that line, I thought of Ricky Bobby) roaming the streets and there is still the threat of disease.
So Donald's kids decide to go into the danger zone to their old home. Of course they do, isn't that what children do? I swear if I had children they would be wearing leg-irons. Especially in the middle of a city that has been destroyed by Zombies only a few months before.
As Danny Boyle left the directing duties to Juan Carlos Fresnadillo I expected the film to be a fair to badly done mishmash blood and gore with little or no real -ahem- meat to it. While there was a good deal of blood and gore, the film did surprise me with a well done and fast paced film that tries and usually succeeds in keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat.
True some of the scenes with the rage infected are somewhat muddled, and it is hard to make out what is going on, we do usually see the after effects of an attack. Also, the one place it fell apart to me was the ending. More on that later.
Carlyle is perfect as the father figure, as well as trying to hide some of his own actions in his past. As well as giving his character a certain charm, he also exudes a feeling of menace to Donald Harris.
Yes, there are a lot of the usual generic horror moments, where people do things so stupid you are almost thankful they are going to die and not foul up the genetic pool for the rest of us. There are also the almost always around paint by the numbers American soldiers or at least American soldiers as they are seen by other nations.
Still, with a Spanish director doing a British horror film, I expected a whole lot less then I actually got. I was pleasantly surprised and shocked in a few places. I also got a few laughs which is almost always needed in a decent horror film.
As sick as this will sound to a lot of you, I laughed out loud at the helicopter scene in the park. I kept thinking, "No they won't" and suddenly they were. Excellent.
This is a genuinely scary portrayal of what can and honestly should, happen during an outbreak of a fast and easily transferred disease. The fire bombing of the city and the helicopter gun-ship/car chase while trying to avoid streets and neighborhoods filled with poison gas was spectacular.
Now the ending; think the new version of Dawn of the Dead. Lots of screaming in a new place, camera bouncing around, running bodies with famous structures in the background.
Can you say "28, 3"?