28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later, is just as horrific as the first, full of red-eyed raging zombies spewing blood and chomping on human flesh. Exactly what you expect from a zombie movie, right?

And so much more.

In the tradition of George Romero, this film is really a documentation of what happens when a civilization devolves into madness, when powerful men lose all sense of proportion on how to use their power. Zombies aren't the ones we're frightened of. It's the humans.

The movie picks up 28 weeks after the first movie ended. The zombies have starved themsevles to death, and the rage virus seems to have gone away. A U.S.-led NATO team arrives in Britain and sets up a quarantine for the survivors.

Don, played by Robert Carlyle, is one of them. At the movie's adrenaline-pulsing beginning, Don turns out to be a coward, leaving behind his wife and others to die. He's soon reunited with his two children, who happened to have been out of the country when the rage virus broke out.

All seems good. But this is a zombie movie, so the mushy happy-moments turn into nasty, flesh-eating moments. The virus returns, and Don pays for his cowardice in unexpected ways.

In what some might liken as a commentary on the ongoing Iraq War, the military reacts to the virus outbreak in ways similar to dropping a bomb when a bullet would have sufficed.

There's havoc and chaos and lots of blood. Humans become targets. Right and wrong blur. And civilization collapse.

We are jump in our seats at those fast-moving zombies, and the shaky-camera technique is effective in putting us right where the action is, though it's a bit overused.

But the true terror is in seeing what happens when order vanishes and bullets become indiscriminate in whose skin they pierce.

This is about life not mattering as much anymore. It's about becoming numb to suffering because you're too busy saving your own neck. It's about what happens when violence begets violence and the room for compassion shrinks.

This is not a perfect movie. The first had more oomph. The characters felt more real, especially the one played by Cillian Murphy.

Yet, this, like the first one, while not terribly deep, leaves you with a chill in your bones that doesn't come just from the sight of really scary zombies. It comes from seeing man's inhumanity to his fellow man.