28 Weeks Later

***Spoiler Alert. Don't Read If You Haven't Seen the Movie***

I'm a big fan of the first movie, so I had the typical reservations about its sequel, 28 Weeks Later. But it turned out to be a great movie, even better than the first. The writing and acting were top notch, even if the production values were a bit on the scant side. I especially appreciated the moral ambiguity regarding the husband abandoning his wife. Watching the husband run as the infected drag his wife down was as heart-wrenching as it was understandable. The scene where the two are separated in the room is especially poignant; you can see the husband calculate whether he can stay and save his wife, but then ultimately abandon that hope as he flees to save himself.

My only real complaint with the movie has to do with the origin of the second outbreak. It turns out that the abandoned wife possessed some genetic anomaly that rendered her immune to the virus, even though she actively carried it through her bloodstream. Completely believable, to be sure. My problem is that once the army doctor diagnosed her as immune, but a carrier, would the military really leave her unguarded? It seems unlikely. It was a horrible scene to watch the husband sneak in to see his wife, kiss her, and then become infected. The whole time I was wondering, he didn't encounter a single guard to prevent him from entering the room?

But I quibble. 28 Weeks Later proved a worthy sequel to the original. It left an ending open to a third movie, the expansion of the virus to mainland Europe. The third movie could perhaps involve an outright war between the U.S. Army and millions of infected Europeans. I'm envisioning the use of tactical nuclear weapons to wipe out entire infested cities, creating a new world not unlike that of the Fallout series, or even Hellgate: London. It'd be great to see a third movie get a bigger budget to play with, but I don't think either movie has done particularly well at the box office.