28 Years Later, 2025
Directed by Danny Boyle.
Starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Erin Kellyman, Geoffrey Newland, Gordon Alexander, Kim Allan, Joe Blakemore, Chi Lewis-Parry, Christopher Fulford, Emma Laird, Sandy Batchelor, Celi Crossland, Edvin Ryding, Ghazi Al Ruffai, Kat Kitchener, and Robert Rhodes.
SYNOPSIS:
Twenty-eight years since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one member departs on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.
Preparing a son for manhood has been accompanied by numerous traditions and customs across all generations and civilizations. In returning director Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later (with Alex Garland also returning to the series to write the screenplay), that rite of passage questionably mirrors hunting, as Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie takes his 12-year-old boy Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams, unexpectedly but impressively serving as the film’s anchor) into the mainland to not only scavenge supplies for their gated and quarantined small island community, but to kill zombies for sport, similar to how an overly machismo father might insist to his offspring that the only true display of strength is slaughtering innocent animals in the wild.
The “rage” virus afflicts the zombies here, but keeping in line with prior installments (Days and Weeks), there is a palpable sympathy for them that inevitably paves the way to a startling, dark beauty involving a towering pile of skulls. Envisioning one of those zombies (fully realized and brought to life with astonishing makeup effects seamlessly merging their nude bodies into nature) as no different from a majestic, aggressive animal acting on instinct and undeserving of going extinct at the hands of heartless humans is a hell of a concept. Every time Jamie encourages Spike to fire an arrow into an unsuspecting, prone, obese infected as target practice, that metaphor is effectively unsettling.
Such behavior becomes more disturbingly uncomfortable upon the father and son’s return to the community, where Jamie begins to drunkenly tell tall tales regarding Spike’s accuracy and savagery in the mainland, like a warlord hyping up offspring as barbaric, even though they don’t possess the slightest ounce of a killer’s edge. From there, it’s made more clear that Jamie isn’t necessarily a loving and caring husband either, cheating on his ill wife Isla (Jodie Comer) whom he often treats as a burden while insisting that there are no doctors left to properly diagnose her condition which mainly consists of high fevers, confusion, and memory loss.
Shows of violence and brutality in the name of hero worship mean nothing to Spike. Upon talking to his grandfather about a mysterious fire off in the mainland distance who slips up that a mad doctor (Ralph Fiennes) is over there burning infected en masse, oddly arranging the bodies into perfectly symmetrical vertical and horizontal rows, the boy decides to venture off and search for him with his sickly mother, hoping to find some answers. Perhaps doing everything he can to save his mother is the bravest, most heroic, “manliest” action to take.
Danny Boyle also taps into his signature style for the survival carnage (Spike does need to defend himself from the hungry flesh eaters) with freeze-frame snapshots upon impact for close shots, iPhones attached to zombies and other environments for unorthodox but close quarters cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle also returns to the series), and hyperactive editing techniques whether it be splicing together different angles of the action or juxtaposing a storm of arrows laying waste to zombies and humans from previous historical battles.
Lo-fi group Young Fathers (previously having worked with the filmmaker on his Trainspotting sequel) enhance this with a tense score that often blends in with the surrounding elements. Then there is the exquisite greenery, hills, and vistas of the mainland (apparently shot on location in the Holy Island), which can only be reached by crossing the causeway at low tide.
However, Alex Garland’s screenplay lends that bleakness meaning, simultaneously functioning as a coming-of-age story about life, death, and the various internal transformations of the human body, from zombie infections to illnesses. The gifted writer throws in a few elements too many, one of them setting up the second chapter in this supposing trilogy when ending on the emotional climax would have sufficed (aspects of the last ten undercut some of that gut-punch by going for a different tone entirely), but the story itself is handled beautifully.
For an over-saturated subgenre such as zombie movies (admittedly, that craze has waned over the past decade), it’s commendable that filmmakers continue to find fresh material to explore within them. There is some skepticism about continuing here, as 28 Years Later already tells a satisfyingly rich and thrilling self-contained story. However, the prospect of only having to wait a year or two rather than 20 to find out is appealing. 23 years later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are still infected with the touch for thoughtful allegorical storytelling and propulsive horror-action.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
