I suppose that I should confess upfront that when I went into the screening of 28 Years Later, I was not exactly giddy with anticipation. Oh, I admired the original 2003 hit film 28 Days Later, in which director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland took inspiration from the films of George Romero to create a post-apocalyptic saga chronicling the immediate aftermath of the release of a virus that turned people into rage-fueled monsters that weren’t quite zombies but were certainly close enough to qualify in the minds of most people. On the other hand, the 2007 follow-up 28 Weeks Later, which was made without the credited participation of either Boyle or Garland, had a knockout opening sequence (reportedly directed by Boyle himself) but was otherwise indistinguishable from the hordes of other zombie-related product at the time inspired by the success of the original film. Although rumors of a third film have been popping up for years, nothing ever became of them while Boyle and Garland went on to other things. Unfortunately, while Boyle would have hits and even score Oscar gold with Slumdog Millionaire, his last feature film, Yesterday (2019), was a mawkish tribute to the Beatles that was so atrocious that it made the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band look like Help by comparison. As for Garland, he would embark on a directing career of his own that started strong with such smart genre exercises as Ex Machina and Annihilation but which has recently devolved into such clunkers as Men and Civil War. Then there is the simple fact that there has simply been so much zombie product over the last 23 years since the release of the original that an undeniable fatigue towards the genre as a whole is inevitable.
As it turns out, I happened to actually like 28 Years Later but whether you will feel the same way towards it will have a lot to do with what your expectations towards it may be. If you are looking for a film that is essentially the same thing as the original, only bigger, louder and gorier—following the pattern of most sequels—then I suspect that once the admittedly brutal prologue comes to a conclusion, many of you may grow frustrated with the film’s reticence to supply those elements for the most part, preferring to go off in new and sometimes unexpected areas within the franchise’s established universe. On the other hand, if you intrigued by the notion of Boyle and Garland taking advantage of its long-standing popularity to try something different in the hopes that enough of their target audience will respond to what they are trying to do here. If this were the Mad Max franchise, this would be Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and you know what—I really like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Taking place 28 years after the outbreak of the Rage virus, we learn that while the rest of the world seems to be going along as normal, Great Britain has been quarantined and anyone still remaining there amongst the virus carriers still staggering across the land have been left to fend for themselves. The film revolves around a group of survivors who have formed a community on a small but heavily guarded (albeit with bows and arrows) island off the Northeast coast of England that is only accessible to the mainland via a causeway that disappears during high tide. As the story proper begins, we learn that 12-year-old Spike (Allie Williams) is preparing to go out to the mainland for the first time with father Jamie (Aaron Taylor Johnson), the would-be alpha male of the group, to look for provisions and, more importantly (at least according to his dad), to learn to kill any infected that they come across.
Although not without its harrowing moments, the trip is a success and Spike does get his first kill, though he seems far more interested in learning the source of a fire he has spotted out in the distance. After making inquiries, Spike learns that the source is most likely Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a one-time physician who has chosen to remain on the mainland and who is said to have gone quite mad. However, Spike’s beloved mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), has been suffering from a mysterious illness and upon discovering that he has actual medical training and further inspired after making certain discoveries about his own father, he decides to take his mother on a trip to the mainland in the hopes of finding Dr. Kelson and getting her cured. The journey veers from the lyrical to the horrific as they encounter both the beauty of nature reclaiming its place in a world now largely abandoned by humans as well as a number of horrors before arriving at Dr. Kelson’s compound, where the story takes another turn that I would not dream of hinting at here.
It would have been easy enough for Boyle and Garland to merely replicate what they had previously established in 28 Days Later with a bigger budget and a slicker look and feel but 28 Years Later is not like that at all. Although the film certainly has its share of gory and unsettling imagery, it reveals itself to have something on its mind other than supplying viewers with empty cinematic calories. What they are essentially doing here is using the framework of the franchise to ultimately explore the notion of how humanity deals with death, particularly in the context of an existence where death is so prevalent that it barely seems to register anymore. At the center of this debate is Spike, who is just old enough to start contemplating those questions himself (especially in regards to his mother and her mysterious but clearly debilitating illness). On one end of the debate is his father, who clearly has no real regard for those who have passed and who is practically gleeful at the prospect of inducting his son into the world of killing without any sort of moral or ethical qualms. (“The more you kill, the easier it gets.”) On the other side is Dr. Kelson, who believes that the best way to deal with the process of death in such times is to approach it with an increased level of dignity, even to those infected, as a way of recognizing that they lived and that those lives had meaning.
The shift to a more existential tone—imagine a zombie film directed by Terrence Malick—is obviously a wild swing and if it had missed, the results could have been absolutely deadly. Luckily, 28 Years Later proves to be far better than the cash-in legacy sequel that it might appear to be. Garland’s screenplay is an effective combination of big ideas about the very nature of humanity and scare scenes involving shuffling zombie-like creatures, large amounts of exposed viscera and even a horde of rats for good measure that largely avoids the clumsy pretentiousness of his recent efforts. As for Boyle, he almost makes up for Yesterday with his strong work here, especially in the ways in which he is able to navigate the tonal shifts from brutal violence to quiet contemplation without having them feel too jarring. He also elicits some very strong performances from the cast and the talent that he has demonstrated in the past in working with young actors comes through once again in the performance from Williams, who effectively carries the entire film on his shoulders and more than holds his own in scenes opposites the likes of Comer and Fiennes, both of whom deliver the kind of strong, sure work that might have earned awards consideration if they weren’t in the service of films involving people being ripped apart like fresh bread from rotting near-corpses.
28 Years Later has a few flaws here and there—I would have liked to know a few more details about the daily life in the enclave where Spike and his family live and the impact of the concluding scenes is sadly undone by a bizarre final scene that leans towards the goofy while at the same time presumably setting up the already-shot sequel (a trilogy is currently being planned with that second film set for release next year) and which probably should have been moved to after the end credits so as not to spoil the story. For the most part, however, 28 Years Later is an unexpectedly smart and moving (and yes, even scary) work that demonstrates that sequels can be more than derivative hackwork that exists only to make more money for the studios. It will probably be disliked by a lot of people right now who are looking for a couple of hours of mindless thrills but my guess is that as time passes, it will go on to become a genuine cult favorite and deservedly so.