Line #36 Film/TwentyEightWeeksLater


1	[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/28_weeks_later_poster.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:305:''[[TagLine There is no escape.]]'']]
3	->"''We are headed for the green-zone, our area of security and reconstruction, designated as District One. District One is located on the Isle of Dogs. Although the Isle of Dogs is completely safe, the surrounding area of London is not.....''"
4	-->-- '''DLR Soldier'''
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6	''28 Weeks Later'' is the 2007 sequel to the 2002 British horror film ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'', directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
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8	As implied by the title, the story begins twenty-eight weeks after the events of the first film, where a literal {{hate plague}} ravaged Britain: a U.S.-led NATO force has established a foothold in the Isle of Dogs, where it's started the process of repatriating the countless British citizens left stranded after leaving their country during the Rage virus outbreak. Those who return end up quarantined in "District One" under heavy surveillance by US soldiers; Don Harris (played by Creator/RobertCarlyle), one of the quarantined, became one of the few people trapped in London who managed to survive the outbreak. Haunted by the memory of being forced to abandon his wife during an attack by a horde of infected Rage carriers, Don ends up reunited with his two children, Tammy and Andy, when they become new residents of District One.
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10	Since the Infected starved to death weeks ago and no evidence suggests the plague crossed over into other species, the survivors begin the process of trying to rebuild their former lives while the NATO forces begin an extensive effort to clean up further areas of London to prepare for rehabitation. When Tammy and Andy sneak out of District 1 in order to visit their former home, however, the survivors -- and the soldiers protecting them -- soon discover lingering traces of the Rage virus, which kicks off a frantic fight to keep the plague from spreading once more.
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12	Another sequel, called -- what else? -- ''28 Months Later'', was planned by the creators but has been lingering in DevelopmentHell ever since the release of ''Weeks''. It was eventually scrapped, with Danny Boyle and Alex Garland reuniting to make ''28 Years Later''.
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14	----
15	!! ''28 Weeks Later'' provides examples of the following tropes:
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17	* ActionizedSequel: While the first film was definitely not light on action, this one is pretty much one long flight from the zombies all the way through.
18	* AfterTheEnd: The premise of the sequel involved attempts by the U.S. military to recolonize Britain after all the Infected were apparently cleared out.
19	* AirVentPassageway: Andy uses one to escape a locked room after the infection spreads amongst the crowded civilians in District 1. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that Andy is small enough to fit inside an air duct.
20	* AmericaSavesTheDay: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. While initially having things under control, by the end of the film the infection has broken out and the U.S. military fails to contain it. The catastrophe could've been averted if they just had more guards posted on watch.
21	* ApatheticCitizens: They've all just survived a viral outbreak. One assumes that even the ones who were outside of the UK and returned had been shown videos and been told how virulent the Infected were before they even returned. Yet when they are herded to a secure location for their own safety -- no matter how unsafe that actually turned out to be in the end -- they bicker and complain to the troops about it.
22	* ArtisticLicenseGunSafety: Snipers are shown passing time by using the scopes attached to their rifles, rather than binoculars, to spy on residents of the district.
23	* BadassNormal: When the infected begin breaking into the house Don stays behind and holds them off at the breach for quite a while with only a crowbar, buying time for the rest and only retreating when he loses his weapon.
24	* BlindAlley: Seen in one of the short films made for 28 Weeks Later. A man is pressed up against a wall as the Rage virus infected run past the alley — presumably their blinding anger prevents them from doing common sense things like looking around for someone who's gone out of sight.
25	* BolivianArmyEnding: For Tammy and Andy. [[spoiler:Their deaths are not shown at the end, but the Rage virus comes to Paris and presumably annihilates most of the population, with all the ensuing crisis that occurs.]]
26	* CensoredChildDeath: Sam is presumably brutally killed by the Infected in the opening minutes, but it's not shown. [[spoiler:Alice, who was with him, survives, though she doesn't describe his death.]] Likewise, [[spoiler:Tammy and Andy]] are heavily implied to have died in the chaos that broke out in France, but it is also not shown.]]
27	* ChekhovsGun: Heterochromia. One can pick out the entire plot of the movie simply from one conversation in the first few minutes.
28	* DeathByPragmatism: Inverted. When the quarantined civilians inside Sector One initially break out, chased by/mixed with Infected, the U.S. soldiers are ordered to only fire on infected. This causes their lines to be swamped by panicking civilians and infected that weren't identified fast enough. Since the crowd of civilians and infected were coming out of one large set of doors, with multiple automatic weapons trained on it, if the soldiers had unloaded immediately on everyone coming through, they might have been able to stop the infection right there.
29	* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:Robert Carlyle's character Don who we start the movie following is either this or a SacrificialLion.]]
30	* DistantPrologue: The first roughly ten minutes of the movie take place in the midst of the original outbreak in Britain, before Jim in the first movie woke from his coma, chronicling how Don left his wife Alice behind during an Infected attack where she was overrun. The movie then skips ahead to the main time frame, twenty-eight weeks after Jim's awakening on Day 28.
31	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:London has been decimated once again by the virus and the subsequent firebombing, all of the thousands of London settlers have been horribly killed, and the Infected have overrun France, meaning they'll probably spread to much of the Continent. The children's fate is left up in the air. It's possible they survived, but it's also implied that the plague spread to the mainland via Andy.]]
32	* EiffelTowerEffect: Invoked quite literally in the final scene.
33	* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: Doyle is a Sniper with Delta Force. It reflects in his pure Badassness.
34	* EndIsNighEnding: The film ends with the zombies, after a period of containment, taking over France and spreading as far as Russia.
35	* EyeScream: This sequel plays this trope horrifyingly straight. After reuniting with his wife, [[spoiler:Don gets infected by the virus and kills Alice ''by gouging her eyes out.'' This is a direct comparison to the first movie's hero, who does the same to a soldier ''without'' being infected.]]
36	* FriendlySniper: Doyle, a Delta Force sniper, decides to abandon his post after the military decides to kill everyone to keep the virus contained. He spends the rest of his time in the movie protecting the main characters and other survivors.
37	* GoMadFromTheApocalypse: In the {{distant prologue}} set in the midst of the original 28-day outbreak, Alice is a sane and stable survivor before she loses all her comrades in the countryside during an Infected attack. Twenty-eight weeks after Jim in the first film woke from his coma, when a solitary Alice is found by her son, she's near-catatonic and has been living in squalid conditions in a den that she's made in her family's old London house, barely able to string words or sentences together, and oblivious to the giant U.S. military presence that has swooped in and has been constructing a huge safe zone next door to her den for weeks.
38	* HarbingerOfImpendingDoom: When Sam, a frantic child, is allowed into the barricaded home that Don, Alice, and a group of other survivors are holed up in just weeks after the infection began, his arrival portends the events to come.
39	-->'''Child''': My mum, my dad... They're trying to kill me. There's others too.\
40	'''Don''': How many others?\
41	'''Child''': ... ''Loads''.
42	* FalseReassurance: "Everything's fine, I'll be back in a moment." The soldier ''does'' return in a moment, but as an infected.
43	* HelicopterBlender: As graphic and wonderful and horrifying as much of the film.
44	* HeroicSacrifice:
45	** [[spoiler:Doyle]] pushes off the others to safety before getting torched by one of the extermination squads. Possibly foreshadowed with this line:
46	--->"Their [Tammy's and Andy's] lives are far more valuable than mine...or yours."
47	** The people in the basement when [[spoiler: an infected Don bursts in]]. Even though everyone's screaming and panicking, they have enough semblance to recognize Andy as a child, lift him up over their heads and crowd-surf him over the carnage, and then ''shove'' him into a ventilation shaft knowing only he would fit in.
48	* IdiotBall:
49	** If either the Chief Medical Officer or Sgt. Doyle had bothered to explain why the children were so important, even to the children, someone might have been more careful and we might just have avoided [[spoiler:the infection of France and the breach of the sea border which was holding back the infection.]]
50	** The lack of the most basic security measures in District One. No effective barrier on bridges and few guards. It's about as easy as sneaking out of high school grounds during lunch break.
51	** The lack of any Anti-Rage security measures. No panic rooms. Individual homes are not fortified. Furthermore, the soldier put all the civilians in one big room, which is perfect to spread the Rage.
52	** On the children's part, they decided to [[spoiler:sneak out of District One even after the military told them explicitly not to do so and why.]] As poor as the security is on the military's part, they may not have been expecting someone to do something as stupid as what Tammy and Andy did.
53	** If the military had placed even one guard on a woman [[spoiler: they had ''every reason'' to believe was an asymptomatic infected]], or ordered one placed on her immediately ''after they confirmed this,'' all would have been well.
54	** Don holds the biggest one of all. [[spoiler:He pretty much single-handedly caused the second outbreak.]]
55	** The Apache helicopter was firing at a car fleeing from fire and poison gas [[SarcasmMode because a bunch of insane Infected would totally do that.]] Although they probably weren't taking chances, considering that the Infected are at least [[ItCanThink smart enough to head into the underground to survive the firebombing.]]
56	* ItCanThink: The Infected in this movie seem to have a bit more going on upstairs than the ones in ''[[Film/TwentyEightDaysLater 28 Days Later]]'', particularly [[spoiler:Don]], who not only manages to survive the [[spoiler:firebombing of District 1]], but tracks his children through London all the way to the Underground. He also uses a gun as a blunt weapon when he [[spoiler:kills Major Scarlett]]. He's not the only Infected to survive District 1, either, which implies he's not the only one who's retained some measure of intelligent reasoning.
57	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Jacob, in only ten minutes of total screentime in the opening of the movie, comes across as extremely cynical and rude, coldly dismissing Emily's boyfriend being dead simply because he hasn't returned. Despite this, he still stays behind and tries to help the elderly couple from being torn apart by the infected once they invade the cottage.
58	* LoveHurts: And how. [[spoiler:An estranged couple, each thinking the other dead, reunites and is happy that they're both alive]] and well... and kiss, starting the plague anew (and directly leading to the EyeScream mentioned above).
59	* ManOnFire: [[spoiler:Doyle]] after being blasted by a flamethrower.
60	* MenAreTheExpendableGender: Averted; the first person we see die is a woman.
61	* MercyKill: Doyle shoots a soldier being attacked by the infected to spare him a much more painful death.
62	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:You singlehandedly thwarted the attempt to repopulate Britain ''and'' spread the infection to continental Europe]]! I hope you're happy!
63	* OutrunTheFireball .
64	* RoomFullOfZombies: One of the infected creates this by getting into a room of normal people during a lockdown.
65	* ScyllaAndCharybdis: As Code Red was being executed, a survivor in a warehouse remarked, "We take one step out that door, if the infected don't get us, the snipers will."
66	* ShootEverythingThatMoves: There's a fairly horrific scene where the soldiers are attempting to secure a compound by shooting infected, except that due to the speed and the confusion it's hard for them to make out just the infected. Then the snipers get the order that ''everyone'' is now to be considered a target...
67	* ShootTheShaggyDog: [[spoiler:The virus spreads to France]].
68	* ShoutOut: The boy who shows up at the farm in the opening sequence says he's from [[Film/HotFuzz Sandford, and later we see a lone swan wandering around London.]]
69	* SyntheticPlague
70	* TechnicallyLivingZombie: The Infected, [[Film/TwentyEightDaysLater again]].
71	* ThisLoserIsYou: Within the first ten minutes of the film, during the welcome back speech, the woman says "As you can see, District 1 is currently under the protection of the U.S. Army." This may have been replaced with "Look around. You're ''screwed''.", which is clearly proven in the next ten minutes.
72	* TimeTitle: The story begins twenty-eight weeks after the events of the first film.
73	* TooDumbToLive:
74	** TheVirus wiped out the entire population of Britain in under a ''month'', but apparently despite the fact that the Virus was only contained due to Great Britain being an island, the U.S. military deemed a mere ''six months'' to be enough time to adequately classify it as ''safe''. Realistically, Great Britain would have been kept under a UN Quarantine for ''decades'' if not ''centuries'' to eliminate any lingering trace of TheVirus before any attempt at recolonisation began.
75	** There are multiple instances throughout this movie where the second outbreak would have been easily prevented if only the US military had decided to post guards everywhere, leading to a situation where instead of [[TheGuardsMustBeCrazy being crazy]], the guards don't appear to even ''exist!'' The lack of security both internal and external, leads to two children being able to easily escape the safe-zone and let the Rage Virus escape quarantine once again.
76	** Any quarantine room would have had doors that might have allowed entry with a keycard, but exit only with approval from someone outside the room. This simple precaution would have [[spoiler: locked Don in with his carrier wife]], and [[spoiler: the death toll would have been two]]. Similarly, if the civilian quarantine cells had been secured ''at all,'' the infection would never have reached the thousands of people trapped in there.
77	** The [[HarbingerOfImpendingDoom little kid]] from the prologue. Whilst he can be forgiven for not losing the infected pursuing him before knocking on the first door he saw in desperation (it's actually impressive that he got far enough ahead of the infected that they weren't anywhere in sight when he was on the doorstep), when the infected attack the house several minutes later, the boy decides to ''run away'' instead of staying with the others.
78	** The adults in the prologue are even dumber, because this child immediately informs them that he's being chased by hundreds of infected. It's clear that the infected are still some distance away, thus it would be very simple for the group to grab some edibles and water and either go to the basement, or the upstairs rooms, or the attic, simply somewhere they won't be seen, and wait for the infected to pass the area.
79	*** Karen in particular is this in spades due to her breakdown over her boyfriend abandoning them. When the group first hear knocking at the door, she ''shouts out'' thinking irrationally that it's her boyfriend whilst Geoff has the sense to silence her in case it's an infected. Later, when the kid is ''explaining within earshot'' that there were infected right behind him who are likely in the area, Karen in her delusions that her boyfriend is going to come back ''pulls one of the cloths covering the window away'' in the hope she'll catch sight of him, which leads to the infected outside finding the survivors and making Karen their first victim . It's REALLY ridiculous and not even excusable as an emotional breakdown . Watching this happen on screen might make the viewer want to jump into the movie and murder Karen.
80	*** The old woman at the start of the film. Instead of running away from the infected, she decides to stay behind and argue with her husband.
81	* TyphoidMary: Alice is an asymptomatic Rage carrier, and it's implied at the end that [[spoiler:Andy]] may have become one as well.
82	* UnbuiltTrope: Of the TechnicallyLivingZombie, continuing from the previous film. While the rage virus is devastating in the short term, the infected's mindlessness leaves them with no ability to care for themselves, and the film begins after Britain's hordes have died off from simple starvation and dehydration.
83	* VillainHasAPoint: Despite the moral grey area in what they do, the US military's ultimate goal ''is'' to prevent the virus from spreading to the rest of the world, which could bring about the end of humanity. And if the US government had succeeded in killing the survivors, [[spoiler: Andy would never have brought the Rage virus across the English channel and presumably infected France.]]
84	* ViewersAreGoldfish: About 15 minutes after the opening we're treated to a flashback to it.
85	* ZombieApocalypse: Yet again.
86	* ZombiePukeAttack: Some "[[TechnicallyLivingZombie infected]]" constantly hemorrhage high-pressure blood out of their mouths.

Context Film / TwentyEightWeeksLater