A young boy experiences his coming-of-age in a dangerous journey, long after a deadly infection has decimated the British Islands in the intense 28 Years Later.
It has only been 23, not quite 28, years since Danny Boyle and Alex Garland wowed the world with the intense zombie epic 28 Days Later. Taking a different route, following the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse rather than the event, akin to Romero’s 1985 Day of the Dead, and the Walking Dead and The Last of Us later, it rocketed Cillian Murphy to international acclaim. 28 Weeks Later followed a few years later, explores how a society rebuilds and how fragile that is, sans Boyle and Garland. Both were busy with the underappreciated Sunshine. Two decades later, both return to the franchise. It’s been a long wait, but well worth it with both coming back in more mature and thoughtful filmmakers, allowing a new exploration of the zombie concept.
I don’t watch trailers, but I made an exception for 28 Years Later. It’s a powerful, driving short film of disconnected hyping images backed by a disturbing reading of Kipling’s poem Boots pulsing through to terror. I thought “if the film is half as good as this promo, we’ll be in a good place”.
It is. However, the film promised in that harrowing and rousing trailer is not quite the one delivered. This might anger people. Many filmgoers may come out with “that’s not the movie I expected,” and feel disappointed they didn’t see something more standard. I suggest they rewatch with new expectations. 28 Years Later isn’t the rough, big war of people vs people or people vs enhanced zombies hinted at, but an excellent, smaller coming-of-age movie via the lens of survival in a dangerous world of man-eating rage-zombies.
Spike, at the age of 12, is taken by his father to mainland Scotland. It’s his first time off the peaceful island, a group of survivors, only accessible from a causeway revealed during low tide. Guided by his father, he – and thus the audience- is introduced to how things work in what’s left of the British Isles, now quarantined from the rest of the world for 28 years. Garland deftly world-builds in this first sojourn into the wilderness, effectively filling in the audience with ease; he displays, informs, and hints at how people have lived since the Rage Virus took hold, whether they be uninfected humans or the infected. In a nice turn, interesting questions of history and hierarchy of the infected are brought up. These hints and references to a slightly bigger world outside of Spike’s view are a great set-up for what will follow.
Yes, at least one more 28 Years Later film is coming, but this entry is not a “Part 1”. Spike’s story is fully self-contained and arced. Save a single sequence towards the end (one that will undoubtedly divide audiences), the story is complete. There’s no need to say “I’ll wait for the next one and watch together.” Similarly, there is no connection to the previous entries, not even sly winks, allowing viewers to come in cold.
Alex Garland, in the interim between films, has made a career as a fantastic director in his own right with Ex Machina, Annihilation, and others. Already a great writer, his understanding of standing behind the camera has strengthened his writing, enabling him to merge character and wider writing to build his world. He’s created a fantastic protagonist in Spike. Spike is perfectly relatable through his world understanding, his choices, and even his mistakes. A larger world than his island home is offered, one that might give a solution to curing his sick mother and Garland gives Spike an incredible balance of the knowledge in living in the home he’s always known (an aside I adored aspects of folk horror to their current life, its more of a nod than a plot point but gives a great look and life), and reconciling the new information. Through Spike’s story, 28 Years Later is a deeply emotional film, earning its earnest beats with Garland’s honed skill.
Garland creates an intriguing small coming-of-age story within this larger, dangerous world; breaking and reconfiguring the hero’s journey to his ends, including wonderful subversions to the expectations. There are only a handful of characters, but Garland makes the most of each. Newcomer Alfie Williams plays Spike with an intense reality. He shoulders everything the film gives him, and Garland gives him a lot, with measured care. A star is born. He meshes and holds up against three established powerhouse actors he’s grouped with. With Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jodie Comer, he forms a natural family unit, playing off one another with chemistry. Don’t be fooled by the “Sick Mother” moniker from above, Comer is not a friged damsel, giving a beautifully subdued performance. Ralph Fiennes’s Dr. Kelson is another fantastic and strange Fiennes turn, building an icon and transforming the film into a poignant treatise of death and love.
Garland’s fantastic character and world-building are brought to life by his 5 time collaborator, Danny Boyle. Boyle’s trademark kinetic style is fully on show, using jagged editing (by John Harris) via quick cuts, push aways, overlaid non-diagetic sound to set tone and tension (including Boots), buzzing with ferocious energy. 28 Years Later is textbook intensity, with Boyle’s methods keeping the audience on the edge of their seats across a myriad of high-action, engrossingly thrilling, and blood-drenched violence-fueled sequences. Working again with 28 Days Later cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle for the sixth time, he breathes life into the dead world, using the decaying settings to create unease and terror. There’s a grainy analog look to sell the discomfort, harkening to the disturbing look of Italian zombie features.
28 Years Later is an incredibly intense, but profoundly emotional return to the franchise for Garland and Boyle. With a star-making performance by Williams, helped by Taylor-Johnson, Fiennes, and Comer, 28 Years Later uses strong character work to create a terrifying, gory world.