Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is an excellent survival horror. With a grim realism and a resilient Britishness that recalls the most desperate days of the Second World War, it has grit, suspense, and heart – albeit with some tonal wobbles and plot twists that are sure to raise eyebrows. The second sequel to 28 Days Later, Boyle’s 2002 zombie classic, has been much anticipated since its announcement, particularly since it marks the original director’s return to the story (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo had his turn with 28 Weeks Later in 2007) and teased roles from the likes of Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer.
With thrumming sound effects and an ominous atmosphere, Boyle focuses on a community of survivors of the quarantined and overrun British mainland, still wracked by the so-called “Rage Virus” of the first film. Other nations patrol the British Isles with dogged paranoia, but one remote outcropping – based in Lindisfarne, where access to the mainland is only possible during brief low tides – allows for an isolated, agrarian community to develop, recalling the distant past in its old-fashioned village and use of bows and arrows rather than guns.
On this island, 12-year-old boy Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams) and his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, gruff and determined) take brief trips to the mainland to prepare the boy for his difficult future life, where he’ll have to fight and kill the infected. Spike’s mother Isla (Jodie Comer, utterly convincing as a woman who only has glimmers of sanity) is suffering from an unnamed condition causing mental distress and confusion, and, after learning of a doctor (Ralph Fiennes) still living on the mainland, Spike decides he must seek help for his mother’s illness. With some gorgeously harrowing moments – a crawling, starving infected creature sucking earthworms from the ground; or a skeletal one hovering directly and silently behind one of our protagonists – Boyle still has an eye for suspenseful action, and much of it is breathtaking.
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But it’s the world-building in 28 Years Later that makes it shine: an unlucky member of the Swedish Navy, washed up on shore, introduces Spike to his first iPhone; the horrifying sight of the naked “Alpha” zombies who are smarter, bigger, and faster than the others; the grimacing, earthy resourcefulness of the survivors and their humble roles as seamstresses and farmers. Add these details to the decades of trauma and loss that haunt Spike’s parents and you have the makings of a great post-apocalyptic tale.
Unfortunately, though, Boyle goes out on a limb in the final moments of the film, setting up the story for a trilogy by introducing, last-minute, a group of goofy interlopers, led by a cartoonishly evil Jack O’Connell, duly dispatching zombies. It’s too funny and sprightly to match the downbeat, serious spirit of the rest of the film; it feels curiously glib given the focus on “memento mori”. It’s a shame that such a strong sequel ends on such a bum note.
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