It’s been 23 years since Danny Boyle’s infected horror 28 Days Later changed the game for zombie flicks, and the genre has mutated plenty in the interim. The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, even Game of Thrones have prestige-ified the undead, building emotional human survival dramas around this gnawy-bitey brand of body horror.
Which might explain why Boyle and returning 28 Days screenwriter Alex Garland have seen fit to spin their return to Rage virus-ridden UK into a two, possibly three, part saga. Time will tell if it’s a wise call, but from its jaw dropping opening, in which the infected apocalypse plays out over an episode of Teletubbies, this first salvo is a mostly propulsive start.
Things have changed a lot in 28 Years Later’s Britain too. The Channel Tunnel has been sealed off and the UK officially Zomb-xited from Europe. Naval patrols enforce a seaborne quarantine. Bows and arrows have replaced guns and ammo for the grizzled survivors gathered in a Lindisfarne community connected to mainland England by a tidal causeway.
From this folksy, Summerisle-like commune, dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams, a real find) head off on an ultra-violent rite-of-passage to hunt infected on the mainland. Mum, Isla (Jodie Comer), is bedridden with an ailment no one has the expertise to diagnose. Awaiting them are new species of infected, including the formidable Alphas and ‘Slow-Lows’, icky, blubbery zombies who crawl on their bellies.
Danny Boyle reinvents the zombie movie as a bloody pop-art installation
Like the original, 28 Years Later is a film of two parts. The first half, all breakneck, viscera-splattered chase scenes, gnarly slo-mo kills, punky editing and edgy angles (returning 28 Days Later cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle uses his cameras like a slingshot) is thrilling. Splicing in montage footage of marching soldiers, shots from Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, and even archers in action, and layering in discordant sound design, Boyle reinvents the zombie movie as a bloody pop-art installation.
That drumbeat of menace fades in a less-certain second half, despite some acting excellence from Ralph Fiennes as a macabre loner and Comer coming into powerful focus as Spike’s waning mum. The first movie, and even its more workmanlike sequel, were outright frightening in their depiction of societal collapse and horror extremity. This one, less so.
And the ending, which fails to tease any narrative threads and injects a new character seemingly inspired by Jimmy Savile, is a dud. New director Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will have its work cut out keeping this gory show on the road next year.
In cinemas worldwide Jun 10