Certificate 18, 97 mins

Deep concern about the failing crusade in Iraq is exerting a profound influence on an industry that is frequently cursed for its total disregard for the real world. Films that illuminate topical issues are starting to invade the multiplexes. 28 Weeks Later is a blockbuster horror that chimes noisily with local fears: immigration, needy strangers, feral disease and Draconian laws. The young Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was hand-picked by Danny Boyle, the original director of the cult hit 28 Days Later, to inflict maximum panic with a sequel.

Boyle’s original was a sensation. He posited the believable notion that a doomsday scenario would come from within: a virus, not a meteorite, an alien invasion, a nuclear war or wonky robots. Given the Iraq War, Fresnadillo’s follow-up should have been as pungent as a Stilton. It’s a criminal disappointment that it isn’t. The satire, written by Rowan Joffe and Fresnadillo, might have looked sharp on the page a couple of years ago. But it looks desperately crude now.

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

The first reel of 28 Weeks Later is almost as impressive as the original, in which Cillian Murphy woke from a coma to discover that the entire population of London had been infected, or eaten, by zombies. The latent power of Fresnadillo’s first act is that it doesn’t lift a missing finger to put us on edge. No need for hysterical newsreel to tell us that we’re back in crazy, viral Britain. We don’t even need the original cast. The unsettling fear of the first 20 minutes is that almost nothing happens at all. Almost.

Robert Carlyle and his wife prepare a tinned meal by candlelight for a group of refugees in a remote farm cottage. The cabin fever is stifling. Snatched moments of intimacy are full of dread. Yet the tension is terrifically understated. A sudden hammering at the door sounds the first note of hysteria: a young boy seeks instant shelter from a rampant posse of the living dead. The shafts of daylight are a clever shock as the infected punch splintering holes through the shutters and walls. There is nothing quite so surreal as blind panic on a bright summer’s day.

The second act begins 28 weeks later and explores the guilty price of survival. Fresnadillo cleverly adopts the iconic images – spectacular shots of deserted London streets – and the kinetic tics that made Boyle’s film such an instant smash. But the plot is porridge. The infected have died of starvation. The American Army has set up a base on the Isle of Dogs, and the first refugees are flown back to City airport. Carlyle is reunited with his two perky children, who may or may not have a unique genetic resistance to the zombie virus, but a fresh outbreak ensures that no one has time to find out.

The American military overreacts, and the film rapidly degenerates into an Escape From Canary Wharf video game, with soldiers shooting anything that moves, and crowds of shrieking innocents running for their lives from bullets, tanks, helicopters and zombies. The dig at trigger-happy American occupiers does nothing to illuminate a drama that we now regard with weary familiarity.

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