It has been 28 weeks since the original infection. Under the leadership of the United States military, NATO has decided London is fit for repopulation. Siblings Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), 12, and Tammy (Imogen Poots), 17, are reunited with their father Don (Robert Carlyle) after surviving abroad in Spain. They return home to find their beloved city in ruins, their mother Alice (Catherine McCormack) a victim of the original outbreak.

While everything looks to be under control, when a survivor is found, a woman with the potential to maybe wipe out the infection once and for all, things go from comfortably healing to horrifically hellacious in the blink of an eye. With the help of driven Army doctor Scarlet (Rose Byrne), who believes the children are the key to England’s salvation, and a frazzled sniper named Doyle (Jeremy Renner), Andy and Tammy must flee if they are going to survive. But the Infected are coming, and even with the military wiping out everything in sight without regards to their health they are the ones this quartet, and all humanity, had better fear the most.

The end is still pretty f**king nigh in 28 Weeks Later, the nasty and brutally exciting follow-up to Danny Boyle’s international cult and critical sensation 28 Days Later. New director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) keeps things moving at a breakneck pace, refusing to slow down and never letting his foot come off of the accelerator.  It is almost as if the film is standing right on an audience’s throat, the unrelenting nature of this biological terror every bit as gripping and pulse-pounding as it was in the 2004 original.

Unfortunately, the script isn’t anywhere near as tight or as exacting as it was in Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s first feature. There are huge lapses in both logic and continuity, the four writers responsible for the sequel remembering to craft interesting and three dimensional characters but forgetting to always give them something interesting and memorable to do. People run around splattered in blood with no one, including the doctor studying the outbreak, knowing or caring that they are, while one of the Infected stalks the kids personally like he was the zombie Michael Meyers and the children his personal Laurie Strode.

Thankfully, the thrill quotient is so high and the suspense level so glorious this doesn’t derail things quite as much as you would think. Better, this is the rare horror film where the viewers honestly, save for one all-too obvious exception, do not know who is going to live and who is going to die. The basic rules of the genre do not apply, Fresnadillo and company doing a bang-up job of constantly keeping me on my toes and forcing me to wonder who was going to be eaten for lunch next.

Like the first, this one is also a technical marvel. Enrique Chediak’s (Turistas) photography is jittery and continually just a wee bit off-balance putting a person’s equilibrium in seriously queasy sort of trauma, while Chris Gill (Millions) masterfully edits giving the picture a white-knuckled velocity it then uses to its ferocious advantage. Composer John Murphy (The Perfect Score) returns with another coolly spine-tingling score, while Mark Tildesley’s (The Constant Gardener) production design once again makes a vacated and empty London a place where unholy fear and unremitting dread could lurk behind every street corner.

I have to admit, I do wish this film ended better, and a big part of me can’t help but feel there’s a good ten minutes or so of narrative sitting on a cutting room floor that might make bits and pieces of this not so absurdly nonsensical. But the film delivers scares and certainly brought me to the edge of my seat. That’s more than enough for me, 28 Weeks Later a worthy sequel that’s downright infectious in its dispersal of gruesome entertainment.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)