ALL THE RAGE : Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s ’28 Weeks Later’ [7/10]

Published on: May 19th, 2007

Britain, 2008. Seven months after the nation was devastated by a deadly, wildly contagious plague – a 'rage virus' which instantly sent its victims into a permanent state of homicidal psychosis – the island, under the protection of a NATO force led by the United States, is finally declared free of infection. Former residents are allowed back into a heavily-protected area on the Isle of Dogs, the youngest being teenage siblings Tammy (a disarmingly sensual Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), who were on a school trip in Spain when the contagion hit. They're greeted by their father Don (Robert Carlyle), who tearfully informs that he saw their mother Alice (Catherine McCormack) die during an attack by the 'infected' on the rural house in which the couple had been hiding out. Don knows this isn't actually the case – and so does the audience, as we've seen what actually happened during the film's prologue. It doesn't take long for the truth to emerge – and with it, the virus…

This agreeably grisly and unpleasant horror sequel is like a cross between Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men and George Romero's Land of the Dead – though ultimately a cut below the former in terms of technical brilliance and propulsive narrative momentum, and falling slightly short of the latter as an example of how supposedly 'disreputable' horror/sci-fi fare can prove a lively medium for topical political metaphor. That said, the results are rather more satisfying than one might perhaps have dared hope considering the picture is a sequel to one overrated picture (Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later) from the director responsible for another (Intacto).

While Tenerife native Fresnadillo can perhaps now be ranked as an unofficial 'fourth amigo' – alongside Mexico's Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo Del Toro* – the most eyecatching name behind the camera belongs to Rowan Joffe, one of the four screenwriters (and the only native English-speaker, the others being Fresnadillo, Jesus Olmo and Enrique Lopez Lavigne). Joffe's sole previous feature-film screenplay credit was on Pawel Pawlikowski's minor masterpiece Last Resort back in 2000 – a rather more realistically nightmarish vision of Britain, again with parent-child relationships at its core – and one is tempted to ascribe much of 28 Weeks Later's unsentimental grit to Joffe's input.

Of course, this is very much Britain as viewed through foreign eyes – locals will spot the numerous occasions when the geography of London, as rather breathlessly relayed via the dialogue, is decidedly at odds with the reality. But while he's never going to pass The Knowledge, Fresnadillo does bring a fresh approach that pays dividends, allowing his camera to pick out odd little details which a British director might take for granted and overlook – as when our heroes take a breather at a deserted fun-fair and the camera lingers on the unlikely 'celebrities' whose features adorn a merry-go-round's artwork, including the uncrowned King Edward VIII. By this stage, of course, we've learned to be on our guard whenever the film slips into quietly bucolic mode – and, sure enough, within seconds a low-flying helicopter has spectacularly scythed its bloody way through a pack of rampaging nasties, leaving a gory greensward of bisected, still-writhing bodies in its wake: a cheekily extravagant hommage to a similar, famous moment in Romero's Dawn of the Dead in which a whirlybird slices off the top of a zombie's head.

While there was a sense of 'best behaviour' pervading much of the pseudo-classy Intacto - which also, let's not forget, featured the more schlockily grotesque spectacle of a huge, phosphorescent, treacle-hunting winged insect at one memorable moment – Fresnadillo clearly relishes the kind of outrageously OTT set-pieces 28 Weeks Later provides (the most rug-pullingly astonishing of which, sensitive viewers be warned, initially seems set to be a quiet, emotional exchange.) Indeed, the film occasionally feels like a string of such sequences held together by a rather haphazard and flimsy plot – principally kept bumping along by the interventions of a pair of well-meaning Yanks, medic Scarlet (Rose Byrne) and army sniper Doyle (Jeremy Renner).

It's crucial, therefore, that the actors – older hands and newcomers alike – inject sufficient conviction into their performances to barrel the audience along with the characters as they continue in headlong and hectic in pursuit of the script's latest implausible target, its latest impossible deadline. Attentive viewers will have little difficulty detective some rather gaping plot holes – not least the fact that, if this really was 28 weeks after the events of the first film, we'd still be in 2002, whereas in fact there's plenty of evidence indicating that the action is taking place half a decade into the future, including an overgrown pitch at the deserted 'new' Wembley which features prominently in the climax. But in most cases, audiences will be too swept up in 28 Weeks Later's full-tilt shenanigans to bother about such nit-picking: as somebody once said about an old Dario Argento movie, "don't think – just panic!"

Neil Young
19th May, 2007

28 WEEKS LATER : [7/10] : UK (UK/US/Spn) 2007 : Juan Carlos FRESNADILLO : 100 mins (BBFC timing)
seen at Empire cinema, Sunderland (UK), 16th May 2007 – public show (paid  £5.50)

* the d'Artagnan to their Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, if you like.