Why Everyone Needs to See: "28 Weeks Later"

The Basics                                     Cast

Genre: Horror/Survival Horror                                               Jeremy Renner/Rose Byrne/Robert Carlyle

Director: Juan Caros Fresnadillo                                          RT:(70%) IMDb:(7.0) MC:(78%) 

Run Time: 1h40m

Opening Week: $9,800,000

Release Date: May 11th, 2007

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Synopsis

28 Weeks Later is the sequel to the 2002 breakaway film, 28 Days Later. The story picks up, as the title implies, twenty eight weeks after the first transmitted infection of The Rage Virus. In other words, 28 Weeks Later is set twenty eight weeks after the break in at the animal testing lab. As opposed to waking up and facing the apocalyptic nightmare of an eradicated England, the story of 28 Weeks Later brings us back to the shattered nation of England as it slowly, but surely, begins to pick up the pieces cast aside by "Rage" and The Infected.

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Why Everyone Needs to See: 28 Weeks Later

-Those who have seen "28 Weeks Later" are quick to pass judgement, how it is an utter failure in the face of its predecessor. That's only because the last thing "28 Weeks Later" should be compared to is "28 Days Later". In so many ways, the films couldn't be more antithetical to each other.

Abandonment, apathy, betrayal, selfishness, and pride, especially at the perverse degree 28 Weeks Later subjects us too, would never of even crossed the minds of Jim and Selena. 28 Weeks Later in this aspect is a very different, and in some rights more haunting, nightmare than 28 Days Later. While London may be growing back to its full population once more, in regards to something one could actually define as "humane", the streets are just as barren as the ones Jim strode down before. This new, apathetic human nightmare, is the real monster chasing us in 28 Weeks Later.

Don is the characterization of this affliction; while bitten nonetheless, he becomes something darker than the "Rage" that cast the world into this Hell in the first place. Don is the product of a scarred world. Even though her survived the onslaught at the shack, he is far from living. The vice that let him escape such a bloody death, is a soulless evil that will follow him to London, and consume the entire city with it. Even though 28 Days Later itself had an element of human evil about it, the core of the issue was still the infected. In 28 Weeks Later, for all intents and purposes the infected are only catalysts for the evil people unleash on each other.



15 Days Later: Mainland Britain is quarantined...

28 Days Later: The Rage Virus destroys England...

5 Weeks Later: The infected die of starvation...

11 Weeks Later: An American led NATO force enters Britain to restore order...

18 Weeks Later: Main Land Britain is declared free of infection...

24 Weeks Later: Reconstruction begins...

28 Weeks Later...

The camera turns to a monorail hurtling into London. On this monorail are Don's children Tammy and Andy, and today the day Don is finally reunited with his children. Their first questions of course are, "Where's Mom?" and "When can we go home?" Don explains their old house (not the one earlier at the countryside I should add), is still marked as contaminated. He then goes on to elaborate on the death of their mother. Don lies in explicit details how he watched her die. Naturally, he forbids them from leaving the secure sector of the city, but of course when do children listen to anything anyone says in a horror film?

Tammy and Andy end up sneaking out of the flat (for lack of a better word) early morning and begin the walk across the city to return to their original home. Exploring the house, Tammy tries to find a picture of their mother to give to Andy, who last night revealed he can't remember what she looked like. Much to his surprise, he won't need the photo after all. Alice crawls from behind the bed and jumps onto her sun, latching her hands tight around Andy. Alice is then moved to quarantine where it's confirmed she was bitten, but she is still in good health. It is unexplainable. Her immunity is the first case amidst millions and millions of deaths. The doctor's only speculation is that it may be in relation to her already mutated genes. Alice, and Andy have two differently colored eyes. (This is only speculation, and that fact will be important later)

That night, Don has a dream of Alice confronting him. She is surrounded in blackness, staying perfectly motionless and suddenly rips her entire face off. While gruesome, to me the dream sequence was a bit too oddly specific. In other words, Alice ripping her face off is a metaphor of the destroyed identity. One can even go as far to infer this also the reprisal of the soothing/tenderness in the main characters' family . 

That following morning, Don decides to visit Alice (who is still locked in quarantine). After a half ass apology, and stuttering around the same prepositional couplings over, and over, and over, (which could be interpreted as an all too sudden lack of love for his wife), Don moves to kiss his long lost wife. While Alice is immune to the virus, she is still a carrier, and just as an inkling of romance seems to rekindle between the two, she tears into Don's cheek. What happens in the next few minutes is something that defies every aspect of the 28 Days/Weeks Later cannon, if not all "zombie" logic. He doesn't eat her. Alice is still strapped into a medical bed and can't move. For any Infected this would be a fresh serving of "Throats-n'-Innards" but not in Don's case. Don is a very different type of Infected, and quintessentially, the essence of 28 Weeks Later monster. 

• Keep in mind, all Don and Alice talked about in the opening (countryside) scene was being reunited with their kids. When Alice infected Don, she essentially kills his character and any chance of Don being recognized as Andy's or Tammy's father ever again; so what does he do? He gouges out Alice's eyes. He could have ripped her throat open and seen her killed, but he smashes her eyes in to assure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she'll never see her kids as long as she lives. What may be even more shocking, at least to the zombie paradigm, is that Don JUST LEAVES her there. He doesn't eat her, he doesn't rip her to shreds, he just leaves.
• The next time we see Don is in the parking garage. A mob of people had been locked into the parking garage by the army "for their own protection". Andy is walking around the parking complex when he sees his father, on the other side of a locked door. Don begins pounding, and pounding, and pounding, until door finally breaks open. Andy makes a break for it, and Don chases after in the same direction. All the while as the other infected storm in, ripping apart the civilian mass, the camera never particularly captures Don ripping open another human being while in the brief chase with his son.
• Don himself, takes a long hiatus from the film, and the film moves to another villain. The military moves a team to the bottom of the parking complex to cut off the escaping infected.Commanders and soldiers yell back and forth at each other only to target the infected. For a short time, this works alright until the bulkhead of people run down the last ramp of the parking garage. Communication between soldiers and the snipers above head becomes a jam of "there's too many of them!", "I can't get a target", and most importantly "I can't tell which is which". The communication storm is broken by a single ominous command from the top down "Engage all targets, repeat engage all targets, Code Red is now in effect."  MG nests on tanks, snipers, ground infantry, and infected start ripping into people left and right. Shortly escaping the slaughter, we see Andy, Tammy, and Major Scarlet Levy (the doctor who took on Alice's case) in a ration supplies landing. One of the civilians in panic keeps screaming, "What the hell is happening out there?!" to which Major Levy silently responds "It's Code Red." 

And that's all that needs saying. There isn't some long term plan to curb back the infected, Code Red is the systematic executional cleansing of London. First step, is the air force firebombing the whole city of London. The camera takes extensive time documenting the mass scale of the slaughter. One thing to pay close attention to, is that while the camera captures groups of people bursting into ash, not a single building explodes or collapses on itself. The fire bombing is nothing more than a measure to obliterate every living thing in the city. Later, the camera pans behind a statue of a man with a tri-cornered hat staring into the towers of flame that illuminate the city at night. We then see the statues face, which is quickly recognizable as that of George Washington. At first, I was lost entirely why the director was so specific on mentioning the statue in the first place. Then I stumbled on this...

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. 

Like a fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master."

-George Washington.

The key into grasping the nightmare of 28 Weeks Later is this: humans are directly responsible for more deaths than the Infected in all of 28 Weeks Later/28 Days Later combined. While this is the thesis of this blog post, there are so many little things about 28 Weeks Later that really do make it a worth while film. 

As always thanks for reading guys, and by all means share this.
I hope to be reading your comments/emails soon.

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