28 Years Later is not beholden to the traditional mechanics of zombie movies. This film is about effects, not causes. 28 Years Later is not an outbreak movie — it’s about isolationism, not a viral spread. Even the concept of zombie infection does not hang at the forefront — zombies are just deadly adversaries here — 28 Years Later is not about survivalism, it’s about the consequences of Brexit and COVID. Allegories are writ-large: Probably nobody needs to tell you modern zombie movies are about the political fallout of our times. In the real world, it’s the actions of the living that are terrifying, not the speculative living dead. Our context of fear has shifted. Director Danny Boyle returns to his definitive franchise and leans away from traditional devices and surface-level zombie metaphors, ambling toward a continuation of the series focus on sociopolitical commentary, using zombies as a means to show the effects of our nerves being frayed by current events. Zombies are not the problem, they are a result of the problem humans have created for themselves.
It’s been a few decades since the outbreak, after all, and as we’ve learned from living inside a chaotic news cycle 24/7, we can come to normalize anything. That’s how 28 Years Later moves the zombie movie forward, by realizing that we can A. Become complacent in anything and B. Find the solution in each other no matter how grave the stakes.
That’s not to say 28 Years Later doesn’t reinvent how zombies are portrayed. What 28 Days Later (2002) did is made the threat of infection core to our fear of zombies. But we’ve since had a major pandemic and realized even the fear of a virus that can be wipe us out can be very normalized and become Old News. That movie also made zombies faster. There had been fast zombies before but in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later (2007), respectively, the zombies got the zoomies. Whereas zombie movies had so often been about holing up and keeping the community safe, Days & Weeks made them feel neigh-inescapable, a new kind of dread. Years plays inside that same dynamic, through an escalation of zombie mechanics.
The film begins with some children sitting around watching Teletubbies (1997) circa the first outbreak of the Rage Virus, just before these children get ravaged by zombies. The Teletubbies — Tinky, Winky, Dipsy, Laa-la, and Po (say their names) — are grotesque post-apocalyptic creatures living out of bunkers who come out only to soothe children while the world is ending. We must believe that when Danny Boyle and Alex Garland plotted this in the story, they hoped for readings as harebrained as this.
Like the Teletubbies, the characters of 28 Years Later have sheltered in place, now 28 years after the events of the Rage Virus. They live on the island of Lindisfarne, just off the coast of North East England. They are naturally segregated from the mainland by tides which wash over the path to the land and a gated society that keeps zombies out, and an order from NATO to stay secluded for their own safety.
That’s generally good for the population. Except there are things we left behind. And 28 Years Later, ultimately, is a coming-of-age story where a twelve-year boy called Spike (Alfie Williams) is brought to the mainland to hunt by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor Johnson). The film, at this point, feels like intriguing speculative sci-fi, as the venture to the mainland feels so otherworldly. If we think of Boyle as a chronicler of contemporary British imagery (as the director of the hyper-Nationalistic 2012 London Olympics’ opening ceremony), we can draw added value out of how we portrays the Lost Culture and the results of this same Nationalism, projected into the future. The experience of Lindisfarne and Abandoned Old England are so distinctly different in their framing, that we can come to understand that the spaces between them are in conversation with what has happened with Brexit.
So, we enter the mainland for a father and son hunting trip. The outer limits of the mainland are stalked by slow-as-hell zombies. This builds directly upon the slower sort of zombies found in 28 Weeks. Left alone for so long, these zombies have become grotesque in a new way, slug like and rotund, distended bellies, and crawling along, serving minimal threat — unless they sneak up on you. They’re just target practice. This goes well enough until the father and son find a newly-turned zombie hanging upside-down, suspended in a body bag. Take the kill, Spike is instructed, and he hesitates until the zombie falls, and he takes his shot as it scrambles toward him. Now Spike’s a man, by the view of his father and the community. But the real quest for manhood, as the boy will come by it, is just beginning.
The movie quickly escalates, as the duo are chased back to their island from the mainland by the newly introduced Alpha Zombies — mega-fast zombies with very large dicks (28 Inches Later has become a popular alternative title online). As the tide closes in and they barely make it home, it marks the moment 28 Years Later really shows what’s on its mind.
The father now respects his son but this is the beginning of the son overtaking the patriarchal role for the family. That night, during the boy’s bar mitzvah like coming-of-age celebration, he heads home early to care for his mother Isla (Jodie Comer) but along the way, notes that his dad is off with another woman. Isla has grown very sick and there is not enough available medicine or doctors within the isolated community to care for her.
It’s rare for zombie movies to be about another kind of sickness. Not infection but both a spiritual and cancerous kind of sickness that reminds us reality also has its own horrors in store for us. This gives the boy an idea: he’ll venture back to the mainland with his mother and find a mysterious doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who may be able to help with his old method of medicine.
This is a film of two parts really and the first part is an excellent zombie movie and the second part is a disconnected coming of age story that tries to move forward thematically, though it keeps getting snagged on how it diverges from the setup. A fun third-act Ralph Fiennes performance makes the difference tolerable, but it’s ultimately uneven storytelling and feels like two movies, even as it’s just the first of a new trilogy.
Danny Boyle, then, has brought back his Zombie franchise and loaded it with new value, but there is almost too much going on in it, too many new ideas that don’t play within the scope of its horror concepts, so it’s harder to nail down than the now-classic original.
The progression is not only made within the story. Just as the original film was shot on digital video cameras, the new one opts for lo-fi footage too, utilizing phones to create a gritty and more personalized context for how it’s been shot. It’s still heavily stylized and distinctly British in its post-collapse storytelling, but also willing to play with the camera and the cuts to emphasize the action.
After all this time has passed (23 years since the first movie, much to our collective dismay), Boyle has returned with a lot to say. It feels like the themes of the next two films planned — with the second one said to be already written and in the can (helmed by Nia DaCosta, which should bring new value!) — are already instilled within this movie. Perhaps that’s why it feels as though the text of this movie is stretched beyond what suits the mode of the story. Because it needs to generate enough new value to practically reassert itself as a franchise-able property wherein it’s safe to make more of it, 28 Years Later then feels like it’s bridging one gap too many. When it’s just bridging the gap between itself and the old films, we may feel delighted, but it must also do this second job and set up two more movies, and by then, it feels the tide has come in, and maybe we should’ve just stayed out with the zombies anyway. The good news is, perhaps by the time the third movie comes out, it really will have been 28 Years Later. We all need something to count on in these crushing times.