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'28 Weeks Later': London Falling, By Kurt Loder

Zombie sequel stands on its own, in a puddle of guts.

You'll recall that things got pretty grim five years ago in the London of "28 Days Later." After animal-liberation activists broke into a medical-research laboratory and freed a bunch of chimpanzees infected with a "rage virus," the disease quickly crossed over into the human population, and soon the city was filled with flesh-rending maniacs bent on recruiting what remained of the non-monster community to their hideous and ever-enlarging tribe. These rampaging brutes weren't technically zombies -- they could run, for one thing (a lively genre innovation), and they could be shot dead with guns. But George Romero would've recognized them straightaway -- his "Living Dead" pictures were the key antecedent of director Danny Boyle's tight, tense low-budget horror flick. Boyle added a lot, though -- a new look and a substantial plot -- and the result was a small classic.

"28 Weeks Later" doesn't have the conceptual freshness of the first picture (no surprise), but it does stand on its own, which may be accomplishment enough. And if it's not a trail-blazing classic itself, the film's full-tilt jolt quotient is probably sufficient to regale all but the sniffiest of genre connoisseurs.

Six months have passed since the first movie. Mainland Britain has been quarantined, and the U.S. military has flown in to oversee rebuilding and repopulation efforts in a high-security Green Zone on the Isle of Dogs, an East London peninsula that juts out into the Thames River. (An intended parallel with the Iraq War is clear here, but it's sloppy.) Among the surviving uninfected Britons who've managed to straggle back to this haven is a man named Don (Robert Carlyle, the fine Scottish actor featured in Boyle's earlier "Transpotting" and "The Beach"). Don has a disgraceful secret: He and his wife, Alice (Catherine McCormack), had been hiding out in a cottage in the English countryside; when a band of zombies (let's call them that) attacked, the terrified Don abandoned Alice to the marauders and fled. Now, safe in the Green Zone, Don awaits the return of his children, teenage Tammy (Imogen Poots -- great name) and her little brother, Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton -- even greater), who were away on a school trip to Spain when the zombie unpleasantness broke out. When the kids are delivered back to him, Don lies to them -- he says he tried to save their mother, but reached her too late.

Although leaving the Green Zone is strictly prohibited, Tammy and Andy -- what do you think? -- sneak out and make their way to the family's now-trashed London home to retrieve belongings. There they discover their mom in hiding, scuffed-up and scary-looking, but still alive. Soldiers arrive, gather up all three of them and return them to the Zone. There, Alice is diagnosed by an Army doctor (Rose Byrne) as being a carrier of the rage virus, but immune to its symptoms -- and thus possibly the source of an antidote to the disease. Soon Don must confront his ravaged wife and beg forgiveness for his craven cowardice.

This resonant story -- the human heart of what might otherwise have been a familiar, pro forma horror sequel -- raises unsettling questions. What would we have done in Don's place, back in the invaded cottage? Can Alice possibly forgive his treachery? Unfortunately, this compelling plot strand doesn't survive the first half of the picture; and the second half -- in which the rage virus breaks out anew within the confines of the Zone -- devolves into a fairly standard zombie chase movie.

Still, it's a rousing zombie chase. The resourceful Spanish director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo ("Intacto"), who was sought out by executive producer Boyle to helm this follow-up, uses relentless (possibly too relentless) hand-held camerawork to impart a sense of chaotic terror to the high-energy gut-munching scenes and the flight of the children from the contaminated Zone. (He also lays on a green-tinted night-vision effect at one point that makes you wonder when Paris Hilton will be turning up to do what she does best.) And Fresnadillo is fortunate in having two rising stars to anchor the second part of the film. Byrne -- who's also a standout in Boyle's upcoming sci-fi epic, "Sunshine" -- tweaks her limpid beauty with subtle character detail. (It makes sense that, in the spa-free Zone, her carefully plucked eyebrows would start stubbling back in.) And Jeremy Renner ("Dahmer") brings a solid, low-key charisma to the role of Doyle, a white-knight GI who attempts to guide the kids to safety. Equally valuable, throughout the picture, is the richly astringent, wall-of-synths soundtrack by John Murphy (who also scored "28 Days Later").

Zombie-movie conventions are pretty much etched in stone, and among them is the Head-Slapping Plot Lapse. Would one of these crazed mutants really retain memories of his loved ones -- and pursue them with single-minded determination in order to chew them up and infect them, too? And how can the army maintain that the rage virus has been wiped out -- that it's now safe to start putting the country back together again -- when snarling gangs of zombies still roam the environs of London, clearly visible to patrolling military aircraft?

Director Fresnadillo generally manages to barrel over such standard-issue plot holes, obscuring them in the rush of his dark, whirling style. He also revisits the eerily deserted London streets of the first movie here, when the kids and their protectors wander through the empty precincts of Hyde Park, Westminster, and Charing Cross; and he knocks out a bravura CGI sequence in which army firebombs send towering balls of flame rolling through the streets, sucking up fleeing civilians in their path.

"28 Weeks Later" is a worthy English-language debut by Fresnadillo (who also weighed in heavily on the script). One hopes he moves on toward new creative vistas, though, before a second sequel -- pushily prefigured at the end of this picture -- triggers the iron law of diminishing returns.

Check out everything we've got on "28 Weeks Later."

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