There is now a sequel to 28 Days Later, the cult hit about a “rage virus” that decimates Britain. It’s called 28 Weeks Later, but it doesn’t have the first film’s director, Danny Boyle, or writer, Alex Garland, in charge, though it does have more blood, more splatter, more saliva and a larger cast of characters and infected crazies. It’s the kind of film that, if you saw its trailer, you’d think: “Fantastic!” But see it and you’re likely to end up thinking: “It’s okay.”

It opens with Britain undergoing the first stages of rehabilitation. It’s been 28 weeks since anyone with the rage virus – victims are known as “the infected” – has been seen. The US Army has set up a safety zone on the Isle of Dogs for survivors. London is still a wasteland, but they’re slowly cleaning up that mess as well. Brits from overseas are returning home; among them are 12-year-old Andy (Mackintosh Muggelton) and his 17-year-old sister, Tammy (Imogen Poots). We’ve already seen their cowardly dad, Don (Robert Carlyle), run out of his hiding place in the countryside, leaving their mum, Alice (Catherine McCormack), to face a horde of the infected. Don lies and tells the kids their mother is dead, but when they sneak out of the safety zone to go to their old home in London, they discover that mum is alive. She returns to the safety zone, infects dad with a kiss – and, before you can say “anger management”, he’s infecting others, who infect others, and we’re back where we were in the first film.

At this point, the plot takes a curious turn. The Americans decide that the only way the infection can be halted is if everybody, infected and non-infected, is killed. From the rooftops, American marksmen start mowing people down. Has the director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, slipped in a little subtextual swipe at the Americans and their mission in Iraq? Here, the US Army declares it has won the war, then up pop the insurgents – ooops, I mean infected – who start slaughtering people. Then the Americans turn on the people they are meant to protect. Consequently, Andy and Tammy, an American nurse (Rose Byrne) and an US soldier (Jeremy Renner) go on the run and have to survive not only the homicidal infected, but the equally homicidal Americans, who employ poison gas to wipe out the population – just like Saddam did! But wait, there’s more. One of the film’s big set pieces is an aerial shot of London streets awash with giant waves of flame, evoking the Blitz.

BACKGROUND

• 28 Weeks Later

• Basically, there's no hope

• I spy with my rabid eye...

• 28 Days Later review

A wee bit of Method to his madness

He played a psycho in Trainspotting. Now he’s a zombie. Robert Carlyle is a seriously crazy guy

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

I wouldn’t bother to mention this, but the British are the first to start whining whenever Hollywood portrays them as anything but decent chaps. Here is a British film featuring eyeball-gouging, flesh-devouring, blood-sucking zombies, yet the real villains are the Americans. Come back, Mel Gibson: all is forgiven for The Patriot! As a horror film, 28 Weeks Later delivers a few effective, jump-in-your-seat jolts. And those who like to watch frogs in a blender will no doubt enjoy the sight of a helicopter running into a horde of the infected. But it is essentially an uninspired rehash of the first film, one that manages to evoke all the classic moments of zombie films from the past without creating classic moments of its own.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against zombies. Indeed, most film critics are zombies. Hearing the wailing of Fresnadillo’s creepy critters reminded me exactly of that chilling, inhuman cry we critics make when confronting a new lottery-funded British comedy. But Fresnadillo’s zombies run like Olympic sprinters and seem to go from infected human to raging monster without even dying. This undermines the dramatic potential of the story, because we never experience the real horror of watching a man’s humanity slip away as he turns into something resembling a rabid dog. The film also errs in having at its centre the fate of two children. They spend most of their screen time running, crying and hugging each other. But Andy and Tammy are simply generic kids in trouble. We get no sense of their trauma – even though they have lost their parents.

The test of a good horror film is how good it is between the big set pieces. Sadly, 28 Weeks Later is just your standard chase-chew-splatter struggle-for-survival saga. It focuses on the fear of infection when it should have concentrated on the theme of the rage virus. That is something we’re all infected with to varying degrees. It’s as if all the issues and ideas this subject would inevitably raise – such as, do you have to lose your humanity to stay human? – have been explored in the first film, so there is no food for thought left. I fear there is more on the way.

28 Weeks Later 18, 100 mins

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