Don’t wait 28 weeks to see this

Since Coffee House is always keen to recommend guilty pleasures, it is only right to say that 28 Weeks Later is a splendid multiplex movie. More than just another zombie flick – although it is certainly that – it follows the honourable tradition of Aliens in trying a completely new riff on the original film to which it is a sequel, Danny Boyle’s terrific 28 Days Later (virus escapes, whole of Britain wiped out in weeks etc). 28 Weeks Later picks up the story when American troops have moved in to rebuild the depopulated wasteland, and Canary Wharf is the ultra-secure “District One” which forms the Nato HQ. The allusions to Iraq are both witty and unsettling – District One is clearly based on the Baghdad “Green Zone”, and the scenes in which innocent Brits are picked off near the Jubilee Line underground station by Delta Force snipers during a new outbreak of the “rage” virus, is an obvious allusion to the plight of the Iraqis.