2007 has indicated that the horror movie is not dying a quick and gruesome death, but rather a slow and unpleasant one. About a dozen or so horror films have been released up to now, and almost all have disappointed not only at the box office, but also in popularity. From The Messengers, to The Reaping, and even the Tarantino/Rodriguez double-bill Grindhouse, it looks like gore is out. Yet with Hostel 2, Captivity, and Saw 4 all still to be released this year, is there any hope?

28 Weeks Later is another horror film, and a sequel as well. Following on from the surprise indie hit 28 Days Later, this film doesn’t have much going for it at first glance. However, the film ended up surprising again, as it is a thrilling take on the zombie genre.

Carrying on from the first film, 28 Weeks Later returns to Britain, which is now desolate from an extraordinarily contagious infection that turns human into a creature of pure rage, whose only instinct is to kill or infect others around him/her. But 28 weeks after the infection broke out, the nation seems safe again. The infected starved to death, and now the US military has set up camp in London’s Isle of Dogs, in an attempt to repopulate the land. Included in the first civilian group are Andy and Tammy, children of the base’s caretaker, Don, who had to leave his wife to die in order to save himself. However, it seems that Don’s wife, Alice, managed to escape, having a natural immunity to the infection. Yet the infection finds its way into the base, and soon all hell breaks loose, leaving Andy and Tammy to scramble to find their parents as the base is set to be “cleansed” by the military.

Coming out of 28 Weeks Later, your first impression is that its experience is far more intense than its predecessor. There’s more action, it’s twice as fast, and twice as nasty. It’s also one of the darkest films I’ve seen in years, literally. There are scenes which are incredibly difficult to fully grasp what is happening, which is a deliberate attempt to immense the audience in the characters’ panic. Danny Boyle stood back from directing the sequel and instead left it to newcomer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who ,instead of making a tired rehash, does everything possible to make the film a visceral experience.

What made 28 Days Later so great was not only having exciting scenes, but also focusing on character development, and using that to make bold statements about humanity and violence in society. The problem with 28 Weeks Later is that the immediate violence and gore shuts out the characters. Tammy and Andy don’t have time to question their situation, they’re too busy fending off hoards of infected creatures.

However, the film does add a new level to the story, a political one. It’s not very difficult to draw comparisons with the procedures of the military in the film with what’s happening in Iraq at the moment. At one stage in the film, the military issue an order to kill anyone, infected or not, to contain the outbreak. One can only immediately think of all the innocent Iraqis that have lost their lives through America’s “liberation”. That said, the film can’t be said to out rightly criticise the military, they’re just doing their jobs, but it does open up a space for contemplation that aids the film in rising above a level of cheap thrills. Besides, in endeavouring to be so extreme, Fresnadillo ends up making the film almost nihilistic, and certainly explicitly criticises emotional bonds, especially familial ones, which lead people to make the kind of choices that could obliterate society. If I’m not being clear, it’s because I’m referring to the closing moments of the film, which disturbed me as much as the closing moments of Night of the Living Dead must have done to the audiences of 1968.

It’s just a shame that 28 Weeks Later had to be released at a time when general audiences are suffering from horror fatigue. Indeed, the film is far from setting the box office alight. But I suspect that 28 Weeks Later will hold its head up in the pantheon of the horror genre as a sequel that attempts to surpass the energy of the original, and while it doesn’t succeed on every level, it is without doubt a deeply affecting and mostly exciting film, one that may indeed be the highlight of the summer.