Life Goes On
Boyle and Garland return to their breakout property and raise a philosophical middle finger to expectation.
28 Years Later
Director: Danny Boyle • Writer: Alex Garland
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell
UK / USA • 1hr 57mins
Opens Hong Kong June 19 • III
Grade: B
Whatever you think you’re going to get with 28 Years Later, just go ahead and put that out of your mind. Sure, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland essentially birthed modern zombie culture when their (then) digital 28 Days Later unleashed (innovative) fast-moving walking dead in 2002. Yes we’ve been living in that zombie world ever since. So if you think the return of Boyle and Garland to the (now) franchise – after Damsel director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s more militaristic, blustery, American 28 Weeks Later – means you can rest easy with the familiar trappings, think again. That said a few things indeed remain: 1) the film opens with a harrowing zombie attack, this time by the parents of some children watching Teletubbies (ice cold, Garland); 2) it ends with a downbeat “It’s not over” moment set to a punishing musical crescendo by Scottish hip hop group Young Fathers; and 3) Boyle and Garland are still exactly the filmmakers they’ve always been, and so have zero fucks to give about what Sony Pictures might like. 28 Years Later is precisely the messy, high concept, densely themed, grisly, oh-so-British, colouring-outside-the-lines movie Boyle and Garland wanted to make and it’s better for it, even if it doesn’t work all the time.
Boyle begins the first quest this time around with a discordant mish-mash of almost surreal images and sounds; a collage that efficiently brands the film as location specific in a way too many films refuse to be for fear that not everyone will get everything; that “USA” country credit up there is probably purely for its budget – either that or Apple demand some kind of recognition (more in a bit). As super competent zombie hunter Jamie (possible 007 Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his son Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams) cross the countryside, Boyle throws out scenes from 1944’s Henry V, Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots” as recited by Taylor Holmes, shots of St George’s Cross flying high, those Teletubbies and hints of isolationism that recall COVID and Brexit – as a start. It’s a lot. There are bits that drag. Those of us allergic to kids will bemoan the child’s POV. But Boyle and Garland have reset zombie lore again by focusing on humanity existing alongside Rage instead of constantly running.
Not the zombie movie you expect
After the parents go bananas in the house, the lone survivor, Jimmy, runs to the church next door, and again barely survives the hordes. The last we see of him he’s fleeing the church and the overwhelmed priest with a crucifix in his hand. Years later the UK has been quarantined by the rest of Europe (the Brexit symbolism is thick), nay the world, with navy ships patrolling the waters around the island (“Probably French”) to keep the infected and anyone trying to sneak out in. On an island off the English coast, 12-year-old Spike is about to go through the nastiest coming-of-age of all time. In the first steps he crosses the causeway to the mainland with Jamie to make his first zombie kill, a sort of rite of passage in the cultish, agrarian village. His second steps pivot on finding a way to get his mother Isla (Jodie Comer) to a doctor he’s caught wind of, again, over on the mainland in the hope of curing her mysterious, nearly debilitating illness. The last steps are with the same fabled doctor, Kelson (Ralph Fiennes, of course just running laps around the strong cast), who lives alone thanks largely to the cult convincing itself Kelson is some kind of lunatic who’s obsessed with death. It doesn’t help matters he lives in a so-called bone temple. In classic coming-of-age fashion Kelson is a better father figure than Jamie could ever hope to be, and the person who ushers Spike into adulthood.
Kelson is also the character that really distils many of the disparate ideas Boyle and Garland want to dive into, chief among them how we establish a new normal in the wake of catastrophe, and how we reconcile the idea that death is a significant part of living. It’s been a generation since Jim woke up in that London hospital and the infected have evolved too (evidently no matter our viral load humans gonna bone down) – into sad, bloated Slow Lows or advanced and organised Alphas, like Kelson’s, uh, neighbour Samson (MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry).
There are a lot of stops along the way to Spike putting on his grown-up pants, stops that Garland taps his more esoteric side (Ex Machina, Annihilation, the inscrutable Men) to explore as Spike discovers the world, and the people in it, can be deceiving. And of course Boyle (Trainspotting, Sunshine) taps his more chaotic side for those stops, punctuating the beauty that lingers in this apocalypse with manic violence, both captured in ultra-widescreen (2.76:1) photography by DOP Anthony Dod Mantle (Antichrist, Rush, Dredd – the good one) with various iPhone 15 Pro Maxes outfitted with some serious lens accessories. Edvin Ryding as Swedish naval officer Erik, who washes ashore with an iPhone (again) and regales Spike with tales of the outside world and boggles at his backwards life adds some much-needed levity, but it never conceals the fact that Boyle and Garland have been stockpiling ideas for 22 years – not counting political movements and pandemics – and just couldn’t kill their darlings. The constant push-pull among ideas messes with the pacing and at times it seems as if the content is going to spill over the confines of the film like so many rage virus-infected. But Boyle manages to wrestle the film back from the precipice of disaster and leaves us with a tease for yet another, completely different film. Those pounding final minutes re-introduce Jimmy, the sole Teletubbies Massacre survivor, now grown into Jimmy Crystal (Remmick himself, Jack O’Connell), a riff on that most British felon, Jimmy Savile; he almost steals the movie from Fiennes and yes, I want to see how this ends. Come back in January after 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple picks up the story. I’ll pass final judgement then.