28 weeks ago, you may remember, some well-meaning animal activists accidentally unleashed a raging zombie virus across the UK. Never mind, because now it's 28 weeks later. All of the brainless cannibals have died off through lack of food, and the USA army now thinks it's safe to start repopulating the country. What could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out.
The film kicks off at the time of the original outbreak, with Robert Carlyle, his wife and assorted human flotsam holed up in a riverside cottage. When the red-eyed army comes over the hill, I hope it's not giving too much away to say that not everyone gets out alive. Location spot: Ooh look, that's Stockers Lockon the Grand Union Canal, just outside Rickmansworth. I remember wandering along the towpath here as a child. You may remember the area from the 70s TV series Black Beauty. The bloodbath is new, however.
And then to Docklands. The US army have decided that the Isle of Dogs is the perfect place to establish a safe residential zone - either because it's surrounded on three sides by water, or because they saw it on the opening credits of EastEnders. Amongst the first of the returning refugees are Robert Carlyle and his two children, reunited after flying in from a safe haven abroad. But these pesky kids decide to escape the compound (rather too easily, I think) and go on a scooter-riding jaunt to the family home. This, as you can imagine, is a big mistake. Location spot: Ooh look, that's City Airport, and that's the DLR (this must surely be the only horror blockbuster partly filmed on east London's light transit railway), and that's the concrete plaza outside Canary Wharf tube station. Which has a special resonance when you're watching the film in a cinema at West India Quay, just a stone's throw away.
A few unlikely coincidences later and the Rage virus is on the loose again, accidentally infecting all those nice British souls the US army were trying to protect. And their continued intervention only makes the situation worse. Stop me if you spot a parallel with Iraq here. If you can't solve the problem, shoot everyone. And if you can't shoot everyone, firebomb the place and get the hell out. Location spot: Ooh look, that's the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. And it's at this point that the film's geography collapses. I'm sorry but there's no way you could run from Canary Wharf to, and through, the tunnel in four minutes flat, especially if one of you is limping. Still, never mind, it makes for a nice fireball.
It is (apparently) just a short walk from Greenwich to the Millennium Bridge in front of St Paul's Cathedral, and from there (apparently) just a brief stroll to Regent's Park. At least on celluloid it is. As in the previous film, some of the most spine-tingling sequences are the cinematic shots of a deserted London, with litter blowing across familiar streets sucked dry of civilisation. Alas, unlike the previous film, there just aren't enough zombies to fill them. I wanted to see more hopeless souls mutating into flesh-eating monsters, rather than an increasingly ridiculous flight across London. Location spot: Ooh look, that's the disused Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross station. It's a great location for a horror film, although I still cannot fathom why the main characters chose to descend into its pitch black passageways when they had the whole of the rest of the capital to hide in.
After the closing credits I walked out of the cinema and immediately checked the skyline of Docklands for fire damage, before cautiously riding the DLR back into town. The film's success is in imagining what might be, in the not too distant future, should our modern society ever be wiped away. It raises pertinent questions relating to US military strategy, where a handful of soldiers can create greater carnage than the insurgents they have come to control. But most of all it's just a dumbass horror flick with blood, bullets and gore. And, on that level, enjoyable enough. Location spot: Ooh look, there goes London.
