Note: Contains regional references. International readers, be forewarned! 

If Iraq was Britain and the Saddamites were zombies, America would STILL fuck things up! Just like the makers of this film.

I was expecting at least good, if not great things from this movie after this review from the generally reliable Richard Schieb. But 28 Weeks Later, in spite of a promising first 15 minutes and some pretty good cinematography is quite annoying and fuck all.

This is supposed to be a sequel to 28 Days Later, but thankfully it’s not necessary to have seen that film to get this one. Incidentally, it’s not necessary to see this film either, but I’m getting to that. In 28 Days Later, Britain, already home to the world’s shittiest tabloids, chavs, annoying as fuck NRI assholes and some of the wussiest rock bands ever is hit by a zombiepidemic, caused by the RAGE virus. Considering the sheer number of lifeless drones shambling through covers of Killing in the Name Of and Know Your Enemy at the recent Independence Rock, I could make a good case for Bombay being fucked by the RAGE virus too, but I digress. Anyway, all the manly empire building Brits having died out, the population hotfoots it to the countryside which is where 28 Weeks begins.

Monty, from The Full Monty is living an idyllic existence with his wife and a complete surrogate family — a couple of inoffensive elderlies who double up as in-laws and two disgruntled assholes who make sure that Monty and Mrs Monty don’t miss the kids. Anyway, it’s all too good to last and the zombies attack their hovel in vast numbers. At which point, Monty does a run for it, leaving his wife to fend for herself. "Considering how frigid she was in the sack, they might think she’s ALREADY a zombie", he says, giggling hysterically.  

He becomes something of a big-shot in the resettlement area in London, after the Yanks come in to bail Britain's sorry ass out of the zombie crisis. And shortly afterwards, the children (who got a Chav Scholarship to visit the US and educate themselves on the finer points of difference between ‘ho and ‘hoe’) return. They’ve barely touched down and they immediately get down to the sort of annoying shenanigans that make children everywhere such a bane of horror films. They discover that daddy was right and the zombies really DID pass mummy over. She’s brought back to the resettlement facility and is found to be a vector for the RAEG virus.

The kids confront dad in what could’ve been a great sequence had this been a good movie — as it stands, Monty escapes telling the kids that there’s a very good reason that British mothers and dead Egyptians wrapped in shrouds are both called ‘Mummy.’ (Actually he doesn’t, but I wish he had). He then decides to go say hello to the Mrs and see if he can give/get some sympathy sex.

We are expected to believe that he has access to what ought to be a classified military area and indeed to his wife, who, as a known vector for the zombifying virus and the only survivor of the epidemic, ought to have been surrounded by an entire battalion. Anyway, she forgives him, they kiss and he returns the favour by getting zombified and gouging her eyes out.

Now, you might fault Lucio Fulci for hazar things (and I'd disagree with most of them) but one thing you can't deny the old sadist is the expertise with which he set his eye gouging scenes. By the time the eye was actually gouged you'd probably be reduced to a cringing wincing mass yourself. Here though, the gouging gets done in this laborious and  unenthusiastic 'let's get this over with then, shall we?' manner. It’s a spirit that pervades the entire balance of the film — barring a few scenes of zombie slaughter via helicopter blade and possibly the only really good sequence – the last survivors trying to make their way out of the London Underground guided by the night vision of the sniperscope on a rifle.  

There are some advantages to Monty being a zombie, though — for one, you no longer have to put up with his aggravating accent. Secondly he’s a handy deus ex machine and generally shows up to yell and run after his children whenever things are slowing down a bit.

I’ve spoken about how much I hate the designated survivor syndrome — where a character, by being the star of the film, or a large star in general, is just NEVER going to die, robbing films of a lot of dramatic tension. In 28 Weeks, you have the opposite — everyone’s a designated victim, and since you are never given any particular reason to care about them, it doesn’t really matter when they drop dead. Which they do at fairly regular intervals. Only to rise again. Yawn.

Another problem I have is with fast zombies - they worked great in the new Dawn of the Dead but in this film, it’s just an excuse to throw in a lot of jump cutting to give this illusion of speed and to cut away from when things are getting too gruesome for the date-movie crowd. Also it doesn't seem to be clear what keeps a zombie down - they generally stay down when shot, but seem to be capable of taking an assload of damage of every other kind. Monty in particular is the zombie cat with nine deaths — a veritable Energizer Bunny of zombies. While George Romero's films generally had a very interesting sub text , the sub text, if such a thing exists in 28 Weeks is utterly daft. It seems to be quite simply that Americans fuck things up and if you are thinking of helping anybody out, you might want to reconsider because you can be sure it will come back to bite you in the ass. Or the throat. But the stupidity attributed to the Americans is stupefying. Yeah we know they went to find WMDs and WMDs there were none, but it’s quite a stretch to believe that after leaving the zombie virus vector unguarded, they herd the survivors into a room where the zombie can quite easily gain a backdoor entry.

In conclusion, a film that only the very young or the very feeble will find terrifying or even interesting.