Review by Brad Balfour
Film: “28 Years Later”
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, Alfie Williams, Jack O’Connell, Chi Lewis-Parry
Leave it to director Danny Boyle to re-envision a saga with just the right touches that makes a distinct statement and moves it forward. In this case, he and writer Alex Garland took his classic 2022 horror thriller “28 Days Later” and re-fashioned it into a sort-of continuation — “28 Years Later.” It’s now a stunning follow-up to their iconic viral pandemic/zombie apocalypse film.
In the first film, Boyle loads up on zombie iconography (i.e., “Night of The Living Dead”, etc.) but he reframes it through a hyper-kinetic tale which illustrates a pandemic’s impact in ever-frightening terms where zombies are the driving force.
An unexpected survivor — Jim (Cillian Murphy in his breakout role) — tumbles into the fray when he wakes from a coma to find London ravaged by the infected hordes. Along the way he joins other survivors looking for sanctuary away from them. Whether they get rescued or not, we’re left with a world where zombies range throughout the English landscape. A second film, “28 Weeks Later”, posits the virus still raging with not only England on the brink of collapse but possibly the world.
Have these zombies become metaphors for the sterile act of killing “the other” simply for survival? As is shown in this and the previous films, once someone is infected they no longer remain human. They are no longer who they were but have been transformed into raving, mindless creatures. They’re dehumanized to the point of needing to be exterminated — they need to be killed.
In some ways, this notion isn’t merely literal. It’s also ironic in light of the way that ICE and the Trump administration have dehumanized migrants to the point of elimination if not extermination. They are no longer human, so they are creatures who warrant being dragged off and extinguished.
While the first film focused on trying to keep our shared humanity, it also showed how our species could extinguish itself through violence. In “28 Years Later” it crystallizes this, so the apocalypse feels strangely familiar as if it were now institutionalized.
It’s been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped the biological weapons laboratory. England is now quarantined off from the mainland and has become an isolated world of zombies and humans. In a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only affecting the infected but other survivors as well.
The film echoes the fragile bargain of the last few years: civilization is running on a brittle consensus that can fracture overnight. In the first film, much of it focused on holding onto humanity as the species extinguishes itself through a man-made disease-induced violence. “28 Days Later” crystallizes this, but now the apocalypse feels strangely familiar.
There are manufactured rituals of control used to simulate order when none really exists — and that is always threatened. The film echoes the fragile balance of the last few years where civilization is balancing on a brittle fulcrum that can collapse overnight. And, in light of the present political schism plaguing the world now, that is further heightened.
Though fantastic performances from Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes (doing his over-the-top thing) enhance the narrative, the film really centers on Spike’s (Alfie Williams) 12-year-old boy’s mission to save his sick mother Isla (Comer) by bringing her to a doctor. To do so, he is forced to grow up fast if he and his mom are to survive while searching for him. The earlier seen ritual acts of violence he partakes in with his father Jamie (Taylor-Johnson) reflect how their society has come to celebrate violence by making the zombies objects to be hunted.
The most barbarous sequence in the movie is not the barrage of gory attacks from the undead, but a moment where the community of the living glorifies the act of killing the other. The tenets are clear. We may live in a world consumed by violence and beset by a crippling disease, but we shouldn’t forget that every life is sacred.
While death pervades the film, it also transitions into a world that celebrates life once Dr. Ian Kelson (Fiennes), a former doctor and survivor of the outbreak, enters the scenario. So Spike copes with Samson, an alpha zombie. He watches his mom assist a female undead who actually gives birth to an uninfected child. And he also grapples with his cancer-ridden mom who is finally freed of her terminal disease and is celebrated in death. The doctor boils her head down to its skull and gives it to Spike to place it on top of an enormous totem of skulls.
But to be clear, in this scenario as envisioned by Boyle and Garland, the zombie plague only ravages the two islands of Britain and Ireland. Continental Europe and, presumably, the rest of the world, have ultimately beaten back the zombie plague.
With that in mind, I can only imagine that there’s some kind of suggestion that besides this film being a literal telling of zombie-ism, it also offers a metaphor about how Brexit isolated England (and to a degree Northern Ireland) from the rest of the world. The consequences suggest that England has reverted to some kind of primitivism for survival.
But that aside, in the very white world of the plague’s Scottish survivors — who have fashioned life in a highly protected fortress community set on a small island — they have reverted to a very non- technology existence, sort of a pre-civilized life, one that any luddite would love.
For them the world is set to a day-to-day clock, an existence much like that of the Vikings they harken back to. But once Spike and his dad venture into zombie-engorged territory, the storyline takes on frightening consequences far from the initial idyll on the mainland. When Spike brings his mom there to find the doctor, they have to survive on terms more defined by the zombies than by tribal men. The film takes on a whole new spin and offers an alternate vision of the world post-infectious outbreak.
It’s that unexpected turn which is the specialty of Boyle and Garland’s filmmaking. At that point, the narrative shifts into a whole new direction. Without revealing exactly what that is, I can say it provides a perfect set up for the sequel(s) to come. This makes it all the more worth anticipating.