28 Weeks Later

Saw this brilliant sequel on Saturday night and spent several happy hours afterwards pondering the difficulties of surviving the new breed of 'Turbo Zombies.'*

Up till Danny Boyles' amazing 28 Days Later, there was always something amusing and slightly pitiful about zombies as they shuffled about in shopping malls and outside the fences of survivor compounds, providing cheap laughs and lots of target practice.

Boyle's British variety are very different - infected by a 'rage virus' these fuckers sprint at you and are fully capable of running through windows and wooden walls.

I don't want to give too much away about 28 Weeks Later because hopefully you'll go and see it.

Suffice to say it has:

• The best extended opening sequence of any film I've seen since Saving Private Ryan.
• Maintained and expanded the urban spookiness of a deserted London that made the first film so memorable.
• A very obvious Iraq analogy that maintains the Zombie genre tradition of cultural and political comment.
• A great lesson in how to treat virulent killer diseases; your quarantine has to be cruel to be kind.
• Got to be the first film I've seen this century that I actually wished was 30 mins longer.

One minor nitpick - I wish we'd have had just a sequence or two of the brilliant Cillian Murphy (assuming his character, Jim is still alive) and Naomie Harris (who played Selina), and the young Megan Burns (Hannah). To be a 100% proper sequel you have to have at least a scene or two that features the characters from the first film.

Enjoy!

* I believe a BBC reviewer first coined the term 'Turbo Zombies' to describe this new scary type compared to the earlier type, which of course was based on the I.Q and behaviour of Republican voters.