#Andy 28 weeks later movie#
#Andy 28 weeks later code#

The idea of a still-functioning wider world attempting reconstruction after a localised zombie apocalypse is not one many films have addressed, while the very end is a pleasing departure from the genre’s usual prioritisation of the individual’s fate over society’s. There’s some interesting thinking in the screenplay, too. Renner has at least some charisma if no character to speak of, while Poots and Muggleton are engaging enough if faced with the same problem Byrne is fully characterless, and the rest of the cast isn’t much more than plot devices. Carlyle stands out with his Don, concealing a guilty secret from earlier in the outbreak behind a fake grin a Rage patient played by Catherine McCormack has an inscrutable, haunted face in contrast. The performances don’t quite match the inanimate settings. A scene in a Stygian Tube station is intensely atmospheric though maybe the practical need to rely on a character’s night vision equipment makes the utter darkness not as terrifying as it could be a shot of an upstairs window in Andy and Tammy’s old home chillingly recalls a similar one in the prologue.

There are many other touches that make one wish Fresnadillo had a stronger story to work with. In less action-driven sequences, the scenes of a desolate London in the early stages of decay have as much fascination as they did in the original-compelling in the way that alternate-history images often are-and indeed several moments harken back to the 2002 film, notably two on bridges (here Tower Bridge and the Millennium Footbridge, rather than the Westminster Bridge that Cillian Murphy wandered over in 28 Days Later). The outbreak and immediate panic are thrillingly captured in impressionistic style by Fresnadillo and his team, with a highly mobile camera, fast editing, and strobe-like effects adding to the disorientation. The bulk of the film, indeed, takes place outside the security zone with Andy, Tammy, Doyle, and army doctor Scarlet (Rose Byrne) trying to evade both the inevitable new outbreak of Rage and the aggressive cleansing operation being carried out by the US military. It’s “absolutely forbidden to cross the river and leave the security zone”, so it’s no surprise what happens next.

#Andy 28 weeks later code#

They’re led by General Stone (Idris Elba), principally responsible for foreshadowing later plot developments (if the virus comes back, he says “we kill it… Code Red”), but we see much more of special-forces sniper Doyle (Jeremy Renner), one of whose duties is to monitor the perimeter. Though the liberation of Britain from the Rage virus is ostensibly a NATO operation, the troops all seem to be American, who soon discover their occupation isn’t going to be as smooth as they’d hoped (shades here of Iraq, or several other places). Among them are 12-year-old Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) and his sister Tammy (Imogen Poots), a few years older, who come from a refugee camp in Spain to rejoin their father Don. 28 weeks after the Rage outbreak, the infected have died of starvation and NATO forces have established a toehold in the wrecked country their plan for its resettlement is already underway with some 15,000 survivors brought to a secure zone in London’s Docklands. This is only a prologue, however, and soon enough 28 Weeks Later switches to its main storyline with a snappy summary of the story so far. As in much of the film, this scene is gloomy and seems drained of colour, but when the group briefly takes the risk of opening a door to the outside we see that it is brilliantly sunny echoes of the match in darkness.

The first visual image shows us a match striking (life continuing to spark, just about?) and we then meet Don (Robert Carlyle), making dinner along with a small group of survivors hiding out in a barricaded house from the marauding Rage-infected.

#Andy 28 weeks later movie#

The first half-hour is essentially all premise and set-up, and when the principal characters do at last have an urgent need in their lives, it doesn’t add up to much more than a rather abstract “survive pursuit” (largely by the military as in the first film, they’re at least as much the enemy as the zombies). Never, really, does the movie engage in sufficient detail with the mechanics of how its protagonists are trying to survive for us to be invested in the nitty-gritty of individual scenes.įresnadillo’s film opens with a wonderfully foreboding single, long-held musical note on the soundtrack, an early indication that the score by John Murphy-who also composed for 28 Days Later and takes a similar approach here, including the insistent and unsettling repetition of a simple four-note ascending motif-will be one of the best things about 28 Weeks Later.