28 Minutes Seen!

We
all saw what happened after the “rage virus” encompassed

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. A priest who is transformed
into a flesh eating monster or the family and friends that ripped
and scratched at the poor souls who suffered the torture of being
eaten alive… and 28 Days Later, only a few survived.
Or were there more? That
is the question Fox Atomic gave a handful of journalists a chance to
find out the answer to. And
yes, JoBlo.com went along for the ride to see what happens 28
WEEKS LATER. So the
question is, can Mr. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo continue what Danny
Boyle created? And for 28
minutes, I can attest that I think he may well have done it.

What
made the original work was the very humanistic story behind the
dreaded virus which turned people into ghouls.
And with the opening moments in the new film, it seems that
this trend may continue leaving the shocks as part of the story and
not just a chance to put some jarring music onto the soundtrack and
throw a cat across the screen. That
poor cat gets thrown way too much. What
happens is a nasty attack on some innocent people just trying to
survive. Now since Fox asked
us nicely to not give too much away, I will abide.
But truthfully, the story seems to work.
It even feels familiar as we have seen some pretty horrible
tragedies in the past few years. Yes,
there are moments that felt like it could have been taken days after
Hurricane Katrina. And this
gives the movie a sense of disturbing realism.

And
it’s also nice to see Robert Carlyle in a movie like this.
I’ve been a fan of his since Danny Boyle’s own
TRAINSPOTTING and it strikes me that this dude can do anything.
His work here is quite good. There
are also a few other folks that I particularly dig including
Catherine McCormack, Jeremy Renner and a few other faces you may
recognize. As I said, 28
minutes can tell you a lot about a film and from where I was
sitting, this may have a bigger budget and a bigger cast, but it
presents the world in a very bleak world where a society has to be
rebuilt after the tragedy of the first 28 days.
And most importantly, I bought it.
It didn’t smell of bad sequel.

28
WEEKS LATER looks damn promising with a great cast and some strong
visuals presenting

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and the aftermath of the rage virus. I
would love to describe in detail what I saw but I just can’t.
I will say that this looks to be a perfect continuation of
the first and even though we did not see the finished project I was
invested. It was also nice to
see Danny Boyle and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo in a taped introduction
talking about what we were to witness.
Danny as Executive Producer seemed to want to be a part of
another terrific thriller and not just a ‘make a bunch of moolah
opening weekend box office popcorn flick’.
Here’s to the rest of 28 WEEKS LATER continuing with the
promise of what the first 28 minutes had to offer.

Let
me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to [email protected].