Movie · 2007 · Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction · 1h 39m · R · English
Curator score: 2.8/10 (958.5K ratings)
When days turn to weeks...
Overview
Twenty-eight weeks after the spread of a deadly rage virus, the inhabitants of the British Isles have lost their battle against the onslaught, as the virus has killed everyone there. Six months later, a group of Americans dare to set foot on the Isles, convinced the danger has passed. But it soon becomes all too clear that the scourge continues to live, waiting to pounce on its next victims.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.8/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 2.91/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 73%
Metacritic: 78
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Production
DNA Films, Figment Films, UK Film Council, Fox Atomic, Koan, Sogecine
Cast
Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, Mackintosh Muggleton, Imogen Poots, Idris Elba, Amanda Walker, Shahid Ahmed, Garfield Morgan, Emily Beecham, Jordan El-Balawi, Meghan Popiel, Stewart Alexander, Philip Bulcock, Chris Ryman, Tristan Tait, William Meredith, Matt Reeves
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A tense, often brutal sequel with a standout opening, strong atmosphere, and memorable visual momentum, but it’s also notorious for thin characterization and frustratingly dumb plot turns. If you want fast, ugly contagion horror with military panic and big set-piece energy, it delivers; if you need the emotional precision of the original, it falls short.
Best for
fans of high-velocity infection horror
viewers who like military-collapse thrillers
people who value atmosphere and set pieces over character depth
audiences looking for a grim, chaotic post-apocalypse
Skip if
you want smart survivor behavior and airtight logic
you disliked the harsher, more conventional sequel approach
you need strong emotional payoff from the cast
you’re mainly here for the original film’s intimate dread
Overview
This sequel leans harder into spectacle than its predecessor, but it still knows how to weaponize panic. The opening sequence is the clear high point: immediate, ugly, and expertly staged, with a sense of catastrophe that the movie keeps chasing afterward. When it’s moving, it’s genuinely nasty and effective, and the sound-and-image assault gives it a relentless pulse.
Worth noting
The problem is that the script keeps undercutting its own tension with characters making baffling choices, especially once the story shifts from survival to containment failure. The emotional center is thinner than it should be, so the film often feels like a series of escalating disasters rather than a fully convincing nightmare. That said, the production is polished, the momentum is strong, and the film has a mean streak that genre fans may appreciate.
Bottom line
As a follow-up, it’s less distinctive than the original but still a solid piece of infection-horror craft. It works best when viewed as a grim, militarized disaster movie with infected monsters, not as a character study or a suspense puzzle. If you can tolerate the stupidity of the humans, the rage outbreak itself remains the main attraction.
Top Letterboxd reviews
adambolt (3★) · 12319 likes
and as usual kids ruin everything
cob (1.5★) · 9213 likes
opening is genuinely so fucking good and then the rest of the movie happens
kim 🩸 (3★) · 8771 likes
you could play that score over footage of someone taking a shit and i'd still give it a couple stars it goes SO HARD
Josh Lewis (3★) · 8210 likes
"The US army is responsible for your safety." God help us all...
A far more conventionally made follow up to Garland, Boyle and Dod Mantle's Romero/Matheson post-apocalypse for the mini-DV era work on the original, but still a fairly gnarly and well-photographed example of the genre nonetheless. The opening cottage invasion with Boyle alumni Robert Carlyle sprinting across the grassy, zombie-covered hillside to John Murphy's "In The House - In A Heartbeat" theme (followed by the reveal of his cowardice… more
-ˏˋ mak ˊˎ- (2★) · 6682 likes
the editing in this alone could kill a small victorian child