Film Review - 28 Years Later
Images courtesy of Sony Pictures.
In a world long wrought by countless IP cashgrabs, prequels, re-quels, spinoffs, and expanded universes, Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s 28 Years Later emerges like a reanimated corpse from the earth in search of fresh meat. Loosely following on from the fallout of the rage virus shown in Days and Weeks, this latest entry - and first in a supposed new trilogy - opts not to show us a society still fighting against its collapse, but a new tribalistic pecking order where the infected are accepted as the dominant force on the British mainland. The filmmaking duo have made it abundantly clear in interviews that this approach is a response to the malaise of the general public in a post-lockdown and more acutely post-Brexit world, but Years conveys this without feeling like it's trying too hard to make viewers pick sides.
Picking up nearly three decades (as the title would suggest) after the outbreak that had London burning and Cillian wandering the streets with his Murphy out, we now follow Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie, a father to 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and husband to the ailing Isla (Jodie Comer), as he guides his son on a rite of passage that would see the young boy blooded by way of making a pilgrimage to the zombie-ridden mainland to kill his first infected. But when Spike realises his father might be withholding secrets about what lies across the bridge from their quaint island village, he sets off on his own to find a cure for his mother's mystery illness, crossing paths with Ralph Fiennes’ Dr. Ian Kelson, as well as new mutations of the virus that have caused the infected to take on attributes that put them one step closer to a hierarchy of their own.
This dynamic recontextualises the landscape of the post-apocalyptic world, turning flesh eating monsters into animals that feel pain, that shriek out for help when in need of backup. Alphas lead packs and ground-dwelling crawlers sneak up for ambush, while the large majority of the horde remain emaciated and fast-moving as a result of lack of food. The undead are here to stay for better or worse, trudging forward into the great oblivion of death that existed long before the outbreak, or as Christopher Eccleston’s army commander in 28 Days Later puts it, “people killing people”.
Where this does get messy is the film's execution, as several pieces of dialogue near the beginning clunk with the weight of exposition, giving its generally capable cast little depth to work with initially. By the time we've spent the majority of the film with the adolescent Spike, newcomer Alfie Williams has grown into the role, and the late introduction of Ralph Fiennes' mad doctor culminates an emotional throughline in a way that feels earned, but audiences looking for more straight-faced zombie fare may find themselves wanting in the pacing department. This is not another legacy sequel that aims to cram old characters in for the sake of applause, which I wholeheartedly commend, but I'm also not entirely sure I felt like it was doing enough in other departments to make this an entry I'll be revisiting frequently, with its excellent worldbuilding undermined by a few tired tropes.
Despite the film’s shortcomings, there is a solid set of bones here and I’m eager to check out the film again, better prepared to meet it on its own terms, and I’m still excited to see what the rest of this series has in store from here. Boasting an array of exciting and fresh visual flourishes from Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Mantle, 28 Years Later clearly wants to put brains back on the menu, even if it stumbles along the way.
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28 Years Later is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 19th of June. For tickets and more info, click here.