![Cover of "28 Weeks Later [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kTi8Pp%2BSL._SL300_.jpg)
Cover of 28 Weeks Later [Blu-ray]Ah, what better way to spend 3 1/2 hours than watching bloody projectile vomiting in high-def?
Perhaps inspired by Stephen King's The Stand The Stand (Signet) where a deadly virus escapes a secret government facility and obliterates the world as we know it, Director Danny Boyle Trainspotting and writer Alex Garland (rumored to be involved with the film adaptation of the video game Halo...sweeeeet!) take the killer virus theme to the next level in 2002 with 28 Days Later.
28 Days opens with what happens when animal activists go wild. In a short, violent sequence we see how a voraciously contagious virus that turns people into raging lunatics gets released into society. Flash to pre-Scarecrow Cillian Murphy Batman Begins waking up several days later in a hospital bed after most of the rest of society has been affected by the germs. (Coincidentally{?} we see this same beginning to a world gone mad in two other recent zombie-type stories: The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye and Resident Evil / Resident Evil: Apocalypse ).
Boyle does an excellent job of directing Murphy from his hospital bed into a fight for survival in a new world. And it turns out that Murphy and the folks that he bands up with need to fear more than just 'the infected'. 28 Days is frightening, suspenseful, thrilling, disgusting, realistic, emotionally-charging...all the ingredients in the Horror genre that make up a Classic.
Too bad 28 Weeks Later didn't follow suit.
28 Weeks Later is a good Horror movie, but a bad sequel. 28 Weeks (fledgling) director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo dropped the ball on several fronts...most importantly that the Rage Virus was supposed to be extremely contagious...coming into contact with just one drop of the contagion should render anyone 'infected'; part of 28 Weeks is the introduction of potentially immune people (just like in The Stand), and that was not lost on me. But there is 'infected' spatter everywhere and on everyone in this movie that seems to have no effect, and that takes away a lot of the realism and continuity that held true in 28 Days.
