Mediadads.com movie review

                28 Weeks Later
                             R (2007)
                             Fox Atomic

                            Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
                            Cast: Catherine McCormack, Robert Carlyle,
                            Imogen Poots, Mackintosh Muggleton, Rose Byrne,
                            Jeremy Renner

The rage virus has destroyed all human life in the British Isles, the all-clear has
been sounded, and repatriation has begun under the watchful eye of American-
led NATO forces. In the process, a researcher discovers that two children,
(Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton), may hold clues to eradicating the
disease, but another outbreak ignites pandemonium when their father, (Robert
Carlyle) becomes infected, and they must run for their lives like everyone else.
Aided by a US medical commander (Rose Byrne) and a US sniper (Jeremy
Renner) who refuses to exterminate the children, they must face the horrors of the
now-rampaging crowds to break free of London and reach the mainland before
NATO finds them.

Fatherhood
Hopelessly outnumbered, and though it tears him in two, Dad runs for his life
when his wife (Catherine McCormack) is being attacked by "the infected". Later,
he can't bear to tell his kids the truth. But Mom is not dead. For some reason, she
is immune, but a carrier. She innocently passes the virus to him while still
strapped to a hospital gurney. She is helpless as he then goes mad and attacks
her before going on to start a new epidemic. As the kids run to escape the city, he
remains tied to them in madness. (We'd like to think love underpins this). He
follows (stalks?) them and when he eventually attacks, his teenage daughter is
faced with the decision to kill him or not.

With both parents afflicted, and a mad dad running wild, we are exposed to a
subtext of apocalyptic proportions for mothers, fathers, the children who love them,
and families everywhere. Not by accident, either. In the director's commentary, they
specifically talk about how important it was to them to bring in echoes of “abusive
husbands” even though they portrayed Dad as a sympathetic character.

Oops! We said Dads are Good? Let's fix that! 28 Weeks Later intentionally
undoes all the good work that 28 Days Later did for Dads. Where in the first film,
the Father-Daughter connection was THE reason to have hope in a world gone
mad, in Weeks, Dad was a coward with survivor's guilt, and the vehicle for starting
the madness all over again. He kills his wife (the consummate, passive victim that
carries the problem), and then terrorizes his children. It's as though the franchise
caught itself doing something right for Dads in the first picture, and then diligently
sought to rewrite its position in the second. They succeeded.

Final Review
Good and bad male models. Father hostile. Intentionally.

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