28 Years Later, Review: The Rage Returns
28 Years Later is the long gestating third entry in the 28 – fill in the blank – Later series started by director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland back in 2002, with the now classic British sort-of-zombie movie 28 Days Later.
Things have settled down somewhat since the last time flesh-eating zombies came jerking and charging at unsuspecting audiences. The rage virus, which set this whole monster-mash in progress, has been beaten back and is now isolated to the British Isles, which are under strict quarantine. While the rest of the world goes on, the British have regressed to a more primitive time. They have none of the modern technology of rest of the world; they work-wood, they protect themselves with arrows. A generation have grown up without the internet, social media, phones, computers. If you take away the blood-thirsty infected it actually sounds rather nice. The focus of the story is Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old boy, with a sick mum, who leaves the safety of his community – an island fortress joined to the mainland at low-tide by a causeway – accompanied by his father, to go on a kind of blooding exercise and make his first zombie kill. Suffice to say, this is more eventful than planned, as they encounter an alpha: bigger and smarter than the usual type, with a penchant for tearing off heads and holding them proudly aloft. He barely survives. Yet despite this terrifying ordeal, Spike then sneakily runs back to the mainland with his sick mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), in tow, in the hope of finding a cure for her mystery ailment.
The film is a director’s tour-de-force. It’s stylish, in a frenetic, disconcerting sort of way. Boyle’s camera is rarely still, much of the cinematography appears to be handheld, and there are sudden Peckinpah-esque freeze frames when arrows pierce brains, necks etc. Boyle knows how to use all the tools of his talent to create tension, discomfort, horror, and the exhilaration of survival. Interestingly, Boyle also cuts short scenes representing British history into the film. There are old clips of WWI soldiers marching with Boots!, the Rudyard Kipling poem which was used so terrifyingly in the trailer, read eerily over the images; there are short snippets of Laurence Olivier’s film version of Henry VI; there are old etchings of British people from hundreds of years ago. These images connect to the way in which the characters are living now, and serves as a kind of celebration of our past and how the past is always present in our culture, how we are all just one zombie apocalypse away from becoming who we once were. In one telling scene Isla sees Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North and waxes lyrical to Spike about how the present is also reaching out to the future, that things of permanence are a kind of time machine: what we are seeing, future generations will also see. Boyle also seems to be in love with the British landscape. Frankly, the rolling hills and forests of Britain have never looked more beautiful – shame about the flesh-eating rage-runners. There is a real pride and affection for our country and it traditions here, which should come as no surprise given that Boyle put together the 2012 London Olympic opening ceremony, which included a loving tribute to Mary Poppins, and a performance by Mr Bean himself.
Alex Garland’s script may be a bit baggy for some tastes. 28 Years Later is an episodic piece. Spike goes on dangerous, rights-of-passage, trip to the mainland with his dad, then goes on another trip onto the mainland with his mum to try and cure her. That’s about it. However, to use a cliché, it’s really about the friends they meet along the way, which includes Ralph Fiennes in a memorable turn as the seemingly insane Dr Kelson, and the hot-tempered Eric, a young soldier trapped on the mainland. Garland has also expanded the lore of the 28 – fill in the blank – Later series, by introducing different kinds of infected. As previously mentioned, we now have big alpha zombies, who are smarter and stronger than the usual mindless running variety, as well as slow, grotesquely fat, crawling zombies. None of this is explained in any but the most perfunctory way, nor are these developments new to the genre, but it does give the film fresh ways of creating suspense that differentiates it from the previous two movies.
Intriguingly, the ending of the movie clearly indicates that there could be more to come and includes a scene and a character which will surely split audiences. No spoiler here, promise, but I will say that it worked for me: bat-shit crazy characters and post-apocalyptic movies (which 28 Years Later sort of is) go hand in hand. Mad Max: Fury Road anyone.
28 Years Later is an intermittently exciting, somewhat meandering return to the 28 – fill in the blank – Later series. It is a richly textured aesthetic experience, that has surprising depth as it reaches back and forward through time to connect the Britain of yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the new zombies are quite cool.
28 Years Later is in cinemas from 20/6/25.
