Movie Review: ’28 Years Later’

’28 Years Later’ receives 8 out of 10 stars.

Opening in theaters on June 20 is ’28 Years Later,’ directed by Danny Boyle and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Alfie Williams, and Jack O’Connell.

Related Article: Cillian Murphy Does Not Appear in ‘28 Years Later’ Producer Andrew Macdonald Confirms

Initial Thoughts

Director Danny Boyle’s ’28 Days Later,’ released in 2003, gave a fresh new spark of life (pardon the expression) to the reanimated dead. Well, hold up: the rabid, frenzied, flesh-tearing creatures of Boyle’s groundbreaking film were not zombies risen from the grave, but living humans infected with a powerful bioweapon – nicknamed the Rage Virus – that turned them into fast-moving, savage, homicidal murderers within minutes.

Boyle’s overwhelmingly violent Infected (as they came to be called), the use of digital video cameras for maximum flexibility, the filming in real locations, and the emphasis on character – particularly Cillian Murphy’s Jim – all contributed to the movie’s success and its impact on the zombie subgenre of horror, no matter what Boyle called his monsters. ’28 Weeks Later,’ a lackluster sequel without the involvement of either Boyle or writer Alex Garland (later to write and direct ‘Ex Machina,’‘Civil War,’ and ‘Warfare’), followed five years later, and rumors have persisted ever since about a third movie – with Boyle allegedly interested in returning.

Now it’s happened: Boyle and Garland have returned respectively to direct and write ’28 Years Later,’ which – as the title confirms – takes place decades after the initial outbreak of the Rage Virus. And true to form, the two filmmakers have once again crafted a horror epic that, while it may not feel as groundbreaking as the original, is incredibly intense, visceral, and atmospheric, while providing characters whose fates we come to care very much about.

Story and Direction

An opening card tells us that the Rage Virus was driven back from continental Europe but confined to the British mainland, with a strict quarantine in place and the survivors inside left to fend for themselves. Admittedly, there’s a rather large hole in the story here if you want to think about it: have there really been no attempts in nearly three decades to contact anyone living inside the quarantine zone, or find a way to rescue them? Perhaps Boyle and Garland are saying something about the transactional, indifferent relationship among nations now, in which a nation’s collapse leads others to push away as if they don’t want to get caught in its wake and pulled under with it, but it still sits there as a gap in the worldbuilding.

Otherwise that worldbuilding is largely well-handled. The bulk of the film takes place among the community of Holy Island, a thousand-acre patch floating off the coast and connected by a causeway. The community there is a rural, agrarian one, isolating themselves with heavy fortifications at the causeway entrance and the water around them doing the rest (their form of government is never quite explained, but they’re damn good at throwing drunken, almost ritualistic parties).

It’s here we meet 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his mum Isla (Jodie Comer), as Spike prepares for a kind of rite of passage in which he and his dad will cross the causeway to the mainland so that Spike can kill his first Infected. Isla, however, is not completely on board with it, but can’t do much about it either: she is suffering from a malady that causes her great pain, mood disorders, and memory loss, and since Holy Island has no doctors there is no way to determine what is afflicting her.

Jamie and Spike’s trip to the mainland – the rules are that if they don’t come back, no one will go out to look for them – is not exactly a walk in the park. They’re pursued by both slow-moving Infected that have bloated into almost slug-like form and the fast-moving brand seen in the previous two movies, only now mostly filthy, naked, and barely recognizable as human. There are also “alphas,” leader-type Infected whose bodies have been expanded to strongman proportions by the Rage Virus and are, if anything, even more relentless and brutal than the regular flavor.

Spike makes his first kill, although he bungles the rest (“the more you kill, the easier it gets,” his dad offers helpfully), and learns that there is an insane man living further out in the land who may have once been a doctor. “There are strange people on the mainland,” Jamie warns, but after father and son return to Holy Island and a lavish celebration – during which Spike sees Jamie do something that is hurtful to the boy – Spike turns on his dad, smuggles Isla from the house, and secretly takes her to the mainland, where he hopes to locate the doctor, Ian Kelson, and see if he can make his mother well again.

All this plays out in a visual aesthetic that pays homage to the original film but enhances it. Boyle uses up to 20 iPhones to shoot some sequences, including a sort of version of “bullet time” for a number of the film’s very gory kills. Yet the film is also shot in an ultra-wide 2:76:1 ratio, giving it an expansive feel while retaining the intimacy of the original movie. The editing is quick, as in ’28 Days,’ and often choppy, mirroring the chaos of the world in which the story is set, while certain scenes – like Spike and Jamie’s frantic dash back on the causeway against a glittering star-filled sky – have a dark fairy tale patina to them.

There are other sequences, some even in broad daylight with the backdrop of pristine green fields and mountains behind them, that border on nightmarish due to the frightening assault of the Infected at nearly every turn. There are moments of beauty as well, such as a late scene between Spike and Isla in the temple of bones glimpsed in the trailers. And there are bucketfuls of in-your-face gore as the Infected kill or are killed, with plenty of guts, gouts of blood, and decapitated heads on hand (not to mention one skin-crawling yet eventually poignant scene on an abandoned train) to firmly establish this new entry’s credentials for the zombie horror crowd.

But best of all, there is a great story behind it all, anchored by terrific characters like Jamie, Spike, Isla, and later, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). Although the script can feel episodic and there are some shifts in tone here and there that don’t quite line up, the fate of these people and the ordeal they go through is riveting enough to carry the movie to an ending that some folks may find irritating (because it all but advertises the sequel, ’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,’ which is due out next January).

Cast and Performances

There are three outstanding performances in ’28 Years Later.’ The first is by Alfie Williams, making his motion picture debut as Spike. This is really Spike’s story, a chronicle of his passage from brave but still nervous boy into a stronger, more resilient, more mature warrior, and Williams handles it with confidence, charisma, and a lack of standard child actor tricks.

Next is Jodie Comer, whose Isla takes more of a central role in the film’s second half as she and Spike venture onto the mainland. Her body and mind wracked by her illness, Isla is trying to break through the fog that envelops her even as her memories splinter and merge. The excellent Comer portrays all this with great empathy and a tragic nobility, showing us why she’s one of the best actors to emerge in recent years.

And then there’s Ralph Fiennes, whose Dr. Kelson seems genuinely eccentric and bizarrely funny when we first meet him, but who deepens into a figure of great compassion and dignity even if he walks around coated in iodine (“the Rage Virus doesn’t like it at all,” he notes). Fiennes brings his effortless gravitas to a role that could have been a stock nutty survivalist but is instead imbued with humanity and grace. His bone temple is a “memento mori,” a remembrance of the dead, that has a stark beauty all its own, and Fiennes’ work reflects that.

As for Aaron Taylor-Johnson, he’s fine. Sturdy, fearless, rugged, Jamie is a pillar of the community, a loving but tough dad, and unfortunately a flawed man who loses the trust of his son. But the character is not as deeply portrayed as the others, and largely sits out the second half of the movie. The other notable player is Edvin Ryding as Erik, a Swedish soldier who gets trapped on the mainland and spends some time with Spike and Isla. Ryding provides some welcome comic relief as he describes modern conveniences in the outside world that Spike has no idea exist – and gets a big laugh when she shows Spike a photo of his cosmetically enhanced girlfriend, whose filler-boosted face remains Spike of a friend’s allergic reaction to shellfish.

Final Thoughts

Like ’28 Days Later,’ and unlike, say, the socio-politically minded zombie films of George A. Romero, ’28 Years Later’ shies away from sociological or political themes. Yet there is something here about the way that societies crumble so quickly and yet take so long to reform, as well as the way in which humans can fall so rapidly into savagery. There are tantalizing questions raised about who or what else lives on the mainland, as well as what exactly is going on in the outside world, some of which will perhaps be answered in ‘The Bone Temple’ or a third film.

But what these films do continue to be about – aside from Boyle and Garland providing audiences with an intense, heart-pounding experience from start to finish – is the way in which individual human beings will strive to be kind and do good even among the most horrific of circumstances. Whether it’s in 28 days, 28 weeks, or 28 years, this is a message that bears repeating.

What is the plot of ’28 Years Later’?

It’s been almost three decades since the Rage Virus escaped a bioweapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. When one of a group of survivors leaves their heavily defended island on a mission to the mainland, he discovers horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.

Who is in the cast of ’28 Years Later’?

• Jodie Comer as Isla
• Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Jamie
• Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Ian Kelson
• Alfie Williams as Spike
• Christopher Fulford as Sam
• Edvin Ryding as Erik Sundqvist
• Chi Lewis-Parry as Samson
• Jack O’Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal

Columbia Pictures’ ’28 Years Later’. Photo: Sony Pictures.

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