"28 Days Later," 2002's terrifying revisionist zombie flick, barely gave you a chance to breathe, and its sequel, "28 Weeks Later," knocks the wind out of you right from the start.
The movie's opening takes us back into the midst of the chaos, when a "rage virus" has transformed most of England's population into bloodthirsty homicidal maniacs.
" Rated: R (language, graphic gore and violence, brief nudity/sexuality) A husband and wife (Robert Carlyle and Catherine McCormack) are holed up with a group of other survivors in a country cottage, and before the title credit even rolls we get a gruesome distillation of the zombie movie that started it all: 1968's "Night of the Living Dead."
Without giving too much away, I'll just say that Carlyle's Don manages to survive, though he now carries with him an almost unbearable shame and guilt. And here is the first, shocking sign that "28 Weeks Later" is going to be something different than your usual, chomping gore-fest.
The psychological damage inflicted here is worse than any bite wound.
The film eventually jumps 28 weeks ahead, when an American-led NATO force has wiped out the "infected" and begun resettling a quarantined section of London. Don is there, reunited with his two children, and they begin to establish a new life which eerily resembles that of war-scarred Iraqis currently living under an American military presence.
Recent reports of a U.S. plan to build security walls in certain Baghdad neighborhoods make such a connection unmistakable, yet new director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, ably taking over from Danny Boyle, never pushes the political points.
He just lets them arise naturally out of the terror.
When the virus breaks out again - you knew it was going to happen - the quarantined area quickly devolves into a war zone, with snipers having to choose between zombies and "friendlies" in an instant. Soon the military falls back on a kill-them-all policy, forcing a handful of citizens - including Don's kids - to flee from both the infected and the soldiers.
Even though it expands in scope and theme from the original, "28 Weeks Later" continues the stylistic touches that made its predecessor such a genre jolt: John Murphy's feedback-fueled score; propulsive pacing; and a frenetic camera, as if the cinematographer himself, Enrique Chediak, was constantly checking over his shoulder.
Chediak and Fresnadillo up the paranoid ante in the climax, when Don's kids and an army medic sneak through a subway tunnel with only a rifle's night-vision scope to guide them.
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