28 Weeks Later Sprints Along as Fast as its Zombies

28 Weeks Later = 4 out of 5 Stars

Stone: Why do you think she's not showing any symptoms?
Scarlett: I don't know.
Stone: Speculate.

A quality sequel to 28 Days Later. To me, it didn't capture the more unique and personal isolation experience that made the first film work well, but because its a sequel, we at least get more blood, more gore, and a bigger scope in general.  Update:  I've come to actually like this film just as much as the original.

Robert Carlyle starts the film off in a pitch perfect opening sequence, going through some actions that are just painfully human and sad, but make sense from a logical standpoint. he continues on in the film, and puts a good amount of emotion into his role, easily making it the best performance in this movie.

Set 28 weeks after the spread of infected "zombies", London has been quarantined.  Jeremy Renner comes in as a US Sniper working within London, helping guard the re-population of the country.  Meanwhile, Carlyle's children, among a large group of others, are among those re-entering the country.  Some major problems occur, however, leaving many innocents fleeing for their lives once again.  Eventually Renner decides he has to help some people instead of following orders (there's a new one). Besides the cliche, he does a good enough job with the rest of his role.

The movie works when it comes to showing the panic of people getting away from waves of infected and making use of John Murphy's score, which I was a big fan of in the first, and now in the second film it comes back much harder.  I had a good time watching the film. It is a hard R and has some neat moments.  Sure Danny Boyle took a step out of the directors seat for director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, but the film is still handled well, making a lot more use of the gritty style that made up a lot of the first film, and keeping a very fast pace, especially since that last half of the movie is basically a long chase scene.

Doyle: Be my shadow, that's it.

It is also very dark. Lots of grisly deaths, very bleak situations, and you can even find it hard to be rooting for certain people, but it works well, with minimal expository dialog, getting to the big action set pieces pretty quick and frequently. Good stuff.

Scarlet: They're executing code red. Step 1: kill the infected. Step 2: containment. if containment cannot be done then, step 3: extermination.