The Forgotten 28 Weeks Later Provides A Perfect Bridge To 28 Years Later

It’s disappointing, but unsurprising, that director Danny Boyle has been somewhat inconsistent on whether his new film 28 Years Later is solely a direct follow-up to his 2002 zombie classic 28 Days Later or will acknowledge the events of 2007’s 28 Weeks Later. Even his recent assurances sound a bit dismissive. Maybe director and co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s sequel hasn’t been entirely excised from the franchise, but it’s clearly been pushed to the margins. By downplaying 28 Weeks Later, though, Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland are losing a perfect narrative bridge between their original film and the upcoming sequel trilogy.

While 28 Days Later drops its protagonist, Jim (Cillian Murphy), directly into the height of a zombie outbreak, 28 Weeks Later takes a wider view, with a bracing and grim vision of the messy business of post-apocalyptic rebuilding. It’s bleaker and more cynical than its already bleak and cynical predecessor, with equally strong performances (including from future stars like Rose Byrne and Jeremy Renner).

28 Weeks Later also has a slicker visual style, replacing the original’s distinctive but ugly early-era digital video smudge with more traditional, cleaner-looking film stock. It’ll never be as influential as 28 Days Later, but it expands on that movie’s ideas in a way that shows the long-term viability of Boyle and Garland’s world.

Rather than a handful of survivors searching for stability, 28 Weeks Later focuses on a state-run safe zone in London, after the United Kingdom has allegedly been cleared of the zombie-creating Rage virus. “It won’t come back,” says the confident American military commander (Idris Elba) in charge, which means, of course, that the virus will come back. The hubris of the American-led forces is a key theme in 28 Weeks Later, which creates a fragile sense of security only to shatter it into something even more terrifying than what came before.

First, the movie looks back to the initial outbreak, when Don Harris (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) found the kind of makeshift community that Jim and his companions were seeking. When their fortified country house is attacked, Don makes the rational but cruel choice to save himself at Alice’s expense. He’d be dead if he stayed behind, but he still carries the guilt of his actions.

That guilt carries all the way to 28 Weeks Later, when Don is living in the military-guarded District One, the only area of London where civilians have been allowed to return. Don is even able to bring his kids, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), back from abroad, where a fortuitous school trip kept them away from the Rage outbreak. But the Harris family soon learns that rebuilding from a world-destroying event is just as difficult as surviving it.

After the terrifying intensity of the opening flashback, 28 Weeks Later settles into what could be called a period of tranquility, although the safety of District One is so obviously tenuous that the audience is immediately looking for zombies around every corner. The method of the virus’ return is both ingenious and sadistic, playing on the emotional attachment that Don and his kids have for the lost Alice.

There’s also plenty of human stupidity, although the way the American military presents District One as completely secure lulls the residents into letting down their guard and assuming the worst is behind them. That’s especially true for Tammy and Andy, who didn’t experience the outbreak and don’t have a true understanding of what Don and the other survivors went through. When they escape from District One to visit their old house, they frolic through the same empty London streets that were a hellscape for Jim in 28 Days Later.

When the Rage virus returns, Fresnadillo and his co-writers make another bold choice, shifting the focus from Don and showing just how ruthlessly they can treat people the audience has presumably come to care about. That merciless approach became common in later zombie media like The Walking Dead, but it’s especially unsettling here, given the hardiness of 28 Days Later’s central characters.

While the earlier movie ended on an optimistic note, 28 Weeks Later seems determined to dash any potential optimism. In that way, it could have been the ideal jumping-off point for a sequel about the zombie plague persisting after nearly three decades, but audiences apparently won’t get to see how that would have played out. Instead, there’s this disturbing detour, delivering a what-if scenario every bit as haunting as the main story.

28 Weeks Later is streaming on Hulu.