The Gutsy Exploration of 28 Years Later
“Remember you must die.” If anyone thought they were escaping death, they picked the wrong film.
28 Years Later picks up, well, quite some time after the events of 28 Days Later. Having handed the reins over for the first sequel, Danny Boyle returns to his undead creation, reuniting with screenwriter Alex Garland (himself now an established director of films such as Ex Machina and Civil War). But while such an incantation of memento mori is apt for a film rampant with zombies, Boyle and Garland also center it as a reflective kernel.
After the infection devastated society, the entirety of the U.K. was quarantined, limiting the reach of death. (In addition to COVID, there are clear echoes of Brexit isolationism, albeit an enforced version of it.) A few small enclaves have survived the decades, and they’ve slowly built back a stable life. The story starts in a small village on Holy Island. The separation of the island from the mainland has preserved them here, allowing for farming, fishing, and the general formation of a community. On the whole, it’s a life that would be familiar to many across the centuries on these isles.
Twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) is not quite old enough to take on the role of mainland forager and hunter that’s reserved for adults, but his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is adamant that he’s more ready than he looks. They venture out for his first foray to test his skills, to mixed results. These early scenes give the first indication that Boyle is turning new pages in his visual playbook and that, while this film deviates from the previous movies, there’s still a lot on his mind. As Spike and Jamie gather equipment, Boyle inserts snippets of archival footage and clips of British films (including Laurence Olivier’s Henry V) showing battalions of marching soldiers and archers loosing arrows. Plague or no plague, war seems to be civilization’s unending infection.
Spike will be our naïve Virgil through this world of death. The village he grows up in is secure enough, but he has deeper reasons to leave. Community is a gift, but it’s always fragile. It always carries its own brokenness, the tools for its own deconstruction. The story truly kicks off when he decides to seek a doctor to heal his mother, Isla (Jodie Comer). It’s about this time that the spirit of 28 Years Later sinks in: this is a young boy’s quest, a grappling with the world that is motivated by goodness. For such a brutal setting, the movie never betrays that gesture, and while 28 Years Later is unexpected in a number of ways, none are more surprising than its thorough commitment to hope. Zombie films are often jaded, callous affairs where any decency is rewarded with pain. But Boyle’s film is sincere, as are his protagonist’s motivations.
The original film—as with many others in the genre—turned its gaze upon the immediate collapse of society: In 28 Days Later, it wasn’t just that our institutions (government, disaster response, the military) couldn’t protect us; in many cases, they responded with even greater evil. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later doubled down on the military critique, framing itself as comment on America’s Middle East imperialism. The focus shifts significantly in 28 Years Later, a film more interested in rebuilding than in tearing apart. Let it be said, Alex Garland remains one of cinema’s boldest skeptics of just about every institution, but his script highlights the goodness at hand for humanity.
As the narrative expands to wilder terrain, so does the stylistic sensibility. Boyle joins with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and editor Jon Harris to create a panoply of novel visual frameworks for 28 Years Later. For as fresh as the narrative is, the visual storytelling is even more inventive. The landscape bristles with unbearable beauty, though the film is always ready to switch to a darker mode. During the action scenes, choppy, rotating frames (shot from a ring of iPhones) highlight the impact of each arrow that finds its target. Surveillance style images were the stylistic thrust of the original film, and we get something like that here, but it veers in a new direction. Red, not-quite-night-vision lenses depict the zombies and wildlife alike, making the parallel sensibly intuitive—here, the zombies are truly animal. They do, of course, still bear resemblance to humans; but their creatureliness is emphasized throughout.
Contrary to nearly every zombie movie before it, 28 Years Later is particularly uninterested about the uncanny or the loss of humanity that comes with infection. Save the opening, we hardly see anyone “turn,” scenes that are often used as the emotional punches in other movies. The action sequences here, while always gruesome, are small and crafty. This only makes Boyle’s film stronger and more intriguing, allowing it to explore new thematic and stylistic ideas. He’s not beholden to tropes—even tropes he popularized.
28 Years Later isn’t here to pose the monsters as consumers or comment on the fractious spirit within society. Instead, it’s curious about how we rebuild, reestablish, regenerate. There are some elements of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, and it will be interesting to see if these themes are expanded in the promised continuations. Primarily, though, the film is invested in humanity persevering in a world of death. Through Spike’s eyes, it’s about what it takes to be born into such a world. Yet such a world is not without hope, and neither is society. Even the most ominous of interactions (Ralph Fiennes in his bespoke cathedral of bones) leads to real connection—if also greater sorrow. The film is far more emotional than expected, almost wistful. Death must come, but so must beauty: “Remember we must love.”
Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is a thoroughly unexpected, inventive sequel that finds new life in the genre by centering hope. In this world, brutality may be unavoidable, but goodness is no less shocking. With such fresh visual style and storytelling devotion, 28 Years Later is a welcome expansion on familiar—if wild and deadly—terrain.
