28 Years Later Review: "Enough terror, splatter and suspense to satisfy”

Not to quibble, but it has only been 23 years since Danny Boyle (director) and Alex Garland (writer) first teamed up to give zombie horror an adrenalized makeover in the original 28 Days Later. Most of us, though, would hardly begrudge them for resuscitating their blood-drenched franchise five years ahead of schedule – even if the result does largely ignore 2007’s 28 Weeks Later and its foreboding Parisian finale.

That sequel, which Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) directed, ended by suggesting the virulent Rage contagion had made it onto mainland Europe. This latest instalment begins – after a scene-establishing, 2002-set prologue – by informing us the virus has actually been driven back from the continent and is now confined to a quarantined British Isles. The parallels to Brexit are there to be drawn, yet they are (thankfully) not hammered home.

Indeed, Boyle and Garland seem to have something more expansive on their minds this time out: the idea that conflict is endemic to Britain’s islander mentality, and that the naked and slavering ‘Infected’ are just the latest foe to feel the force of its bellicose warrior spirit.

Set in the Scottish Highlands, the aforementioned prologue sees a young boy, later revealed to have become eccentric cult leader Sir Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), emerge as the sole survivor of an Infected assault that turns his priestly father into a ferocious demon and decimates the rest of his Teletubbies-watching siblings. Yet it is another naïf – 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) – who becomes the pic’s true protagonist in what, for the first hour at least, resembles nothing so much as a Boy’s Own manual in post-apocalyptic survival.

Coming of Rage

Having spent his life ensconced on the offshore Holy Island, Spike only knows the wholesome and utopian community that gives employment to his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and support to his mentally troubled mother Isla (Jodie Comer). The time has come, though, for him to use the island’s heavily defended causeway to cross over to the Infected-infested mainland: a rite of passage that will see him forage for supplies, make his first kill and encounter the brawny ‘Alphas’ that have become their nemeses’ overlords, impregnators and strategists.

Underscored by the Taylor Holmes recording of the Rudyard Kipling ‘Boots’ poem heard in the film’s stunning trailer and intercut with flashes of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V slaughtering the French at Agincourt, this opening causeway sequence – preceded as it is by a stern warning from island elder Jenny (Stella Gonet) that there will be “no rescues… no exceptions!” – provides the film with an apprehensive early highpoint. The forest-based action that follows, meanwhile, serves as a great vehicle for Taylor-Johnson’s brooding charisma, no-frills approach to parenting and lethal skill with a bow and arrow.

Around its midway point, though, 28 Years veers off on a different and not wholly satisfactory trajectory: one that dispenses totally with Taylor-Johnson’s character and partners Spike instead with the ailing, unpredictable Isla. The ensuing story, which sees Comer and Williams traverse a hostile hinterland in search of a physician who might conceivably cure her, has its own share of stand-out moments, among them a stand-off at a derelict Happy Eater choking with combustible gasses. Where the first hour is taut and ominous, though, the second is dreamy and discursive – a tonal shift that only intensifies when Spike and Isla catch up with loopy medic Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and discover his ghoulish penchant for memorialising the deceased within his ossuary of skeletal remains.

Bone to pick

We will presumably see more of this skull-crammed Bone Temple in the Nia DaCosta-directed sequel scheduled for release next January. (We’ll also get more of O’Connell – only fleetingly seen here – and something of Cillian Murphy’s Jim, Boyle having already spoiled the latter’s involvement during this movie’s publicity tour.) In terms of Spike’s coming-of-age, however, it feels like a macabre embellishment that tips the film into trippily outlandish territory: a far cry, in other words, from the first 28’s chillingly credible depiction of a society going to the dogs.

Come for the propulsive, heart-in-mouth first half, then, and stay for the risk-taking second: one that still serves up a helping of gory mayhem and a self-contained set-piece episode – in which a unit of stranded commandos come under attack – that feels like Garland’s recent Warfare film in miniature. Taylor-Johnson may dominate initially, but Comer more than holds her own later with a performance that combines psychological frailty with a mother’s love and protectiveness. The relatively untested Williams, meanwhile, proves impressively assured and accomplished in what looks certain to be a breakout role.

Though CGI is used to fashion such elements as a wild deer stampede and a swirling murder of crows, 28 Years Later largely honours its series’ lo-fi tradition of jittery hand-held camerawork and visceral practical effects. When not having the Infected vomit over their victims and tear the heads of stags, it also offers a bucolic celebration of the English landscape – one that poignantly includes not only Gateshead’s iconic Angel of the North sculpture (the cue for a moving Comer speech on the passing of time) but also the Sycamore Gap tree so mindlessly felled in 2023.

It is telling that – even with two decades of build-up – there’s little here to match 28 Days’ iconic opening shots of Murphy wandering bewildered through a deserted London. With one sequel in the can and a potential third film in the pipeline, though, there are still plenty of Years to play with.

28 Years Later is in UK cinemas from June 19, and US theaters from 20 June.

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