Magnificently bloodthirsty: 28 Years Later reviewed
First it was 28 Days Later (directed by Danny Boyle, 2002), then 28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007) and now Boyle is back at the helm with 28 Years Later, which is, as I understand it, the first in a new trilogy. This post-apocalyptic horror franchise could go on for ever. As the last film was generally (and rightly) regarded as a desultory cash grab, there is much riding on this one. The verdict? It's entertaining but not outstanding. The biggest surprise is its tonal swerve into sentimentality. Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, however, bring character and heft and, just to put your minds at rest, yes, it's as magnificently bloodthirsty as ever.
What you will most want to know is: 28 years after the 'rage virus' was let loose from a chimpanzee laboratory, where the hell are we? We're on an island off England's northeast coast where a group of survivors have retreated. The virus, we are told, has been contained in the UK while the rest of the world has abandoned us, which is mean. The film is also a family drama, with, at its centre, a dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a mum (Comer) and their son Spike (Alfie Williams). Spike is now 12 and must embark on a hunting trip to the mainland with his father to learn how to kill 'the infected'. This seemed like madness to me, but there you are.
The 'infected' are not zombies as they've never been dead so can't be undead – I'm a stickler for this sort of thing – but they're certainly zombies to all intents and purposes, with their cravings for human flesh and blood. We have skinny, naked, screeching ones who lurch awkwardly (or sprint fast, best of both worlds) and fat, slow ones who crawl the forest floors like Sumo wrestlers with grievous psoriasis. 'There are some strange people on the mainland,' Spike's father tells him at one point. You don't say?
There's jeopardy, jump scares and gory moments – such as intestines spilling out of mauled bodies – in freeze-frame. From what I could tell – through my fingers – one of 'the infected' gets an arrow straight to the penis, and while I'm not rooting for them, what an unpleasant way to go. I'd heard that 'the infected' had mutated to be more intelligent but I couldn't see too much evidence for that. The tonal switch happens midway through, when it stops being a father-son story and becomes a sentimental mother-son one. Which means they go on a quest together that brings them into the orbit of Fiennes's character. And while I daren't say too much it does look as if he's been Tango'd. The audience tittered when he first appeared but I hope they were appreciative (after Conclave, I can forgive him anything).
Boyles's extensive use of an iPhone gives it the shaky look fans of the original will welcome, while the soundtrack features a brilliantly deployed, century-old recital of Kipling's poem 'Boots'. It could be smarter, with less of a kill-or-be-killed narrative, and I would have liked a crib sheet. Who gets to become a fat Sumo and who doesn't? The second film made a big deal of some people becoming contaminated without symptoms, and that's just gone away?
But Comer and Fiennes bring depth – and you can sense some fun was had. The ending, alas, isn't an ending, but a set-up for the next one. I now realise the sequel was filmed simultaneously and is due for release in January. It's called 28 Years Later: Bone Temple. That's cheating, to my mind, and if it picks up where we leave off, shouldn't it be 28 Minutes Later? Get a grip, lads. Get a grip.
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The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Jodie Comer says being led by Danny Boyle in 28 Years Later was a ‘proper dream'
28 Years Later is set in the same world as the 2002 apocalyptic horror 28 Days Later, which saw Cillian Murphy play a bicycle courier who awakes from a coma to discover the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus has caused the breakdown of society. The new instalment follows on almost three decades since the virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, where some have found a way to exist amid the infected despite an enforced quarantine. When one of the group leaves the gated island they are residing on for a mission to the mainland, they discover secrets and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well. Comer features in the film alongside Ralph Fiennes and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. (left to right) Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and Danny Boyle attended the 28 Years Later world premiere at the Odeon Luxe, Leicester Square (Ian West/PA) Comer said on Wednesday: 'I was honoured when I got this script through. 'And you know, with the opportunity to sit down with Danny, who's a filmmaker who I've admired for a very long time, and to be kind of led by him and be on one of his sets is a proper dream.' She added that Boyle leads a 'calm, playful, fun' set. 28 Years Later will be screened in cinemas from Friday.
BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
28 Years Later review: Zombie-apocalypse horror is a 'never-dull' monster mash-up
Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have reunited for a follow-up to their 2002 classic. It has visual flair, terrifying adversaries and a scene-stealing performance from Ralph Fiennes. 28 Years Later is part zombie-apocalypse horror, part medieval world-building, part sentimental family story and – most effectively – part Heart of Darkness in its journey toward a madman in the woods. That mashup is not necessarily a bad thing, since most of those parts work so well in this follow-up to the great 2002 film 28 Days Later, about a virus that decimates London. The new film is one of the year's most anticipated largely because it comes from the original's creators, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland. It glows with Boyle's visual flair, Garland's ambitious screenplay and a towering performance from Ralph Fiennes, whose character enters halfway through the film and unexpectedly becomes its fraught soul. But as with Frankenstein's monster, the seams are conspicuous, making for a patchwork that is never dull but not as fully engaging as it might have been. A lot has changed in the 23 years since the original, of course. Boyle, then known for smart indie films like Trainspotting, went on to win an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire. Garland, then a novelist and screenwriter – 28 Days was his first – is now the director of politically pointed films including Civil War. In 28 Years Later, the central problem is that Garland's political bent and Boyle's commercial instincts don't entirely mesh. The world they have created is specific and impressive though, starting with an island where people have survived the decades since the outbreak by isolating themselves from the still-plague-ridden mainland of England, reached by a causeway that can only be walked across at low tide. It is a community that might have existed in the Middle Ages. Without 21st-Century resources, they make their own arrows for weapons and use wood for fuel. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is impressively solid as Jamie, a harried but responsible husband and father. Jodie Comer plays his wife, Isla, bedridden and occasionally delirious in this community which has no doctor to diagnose her. Mostly, Comer has to look woeful. Isla can barely remember why Jamie is about to take their son, Spike (Alfie Williams), on a ritualistic trip to the mainland. It is time for him to make his first kill of an infected creature, a survival tactic he will need to know. Boyle takes full advantage of his striking technical skills in the father-son hunting scenes, which are pure zombie action-horror, full of kinetic camera movements and quick cuts as Jamie and Spike race through the woods, shooting arrows and trying to outrun the infected. The creatures are officially not zombies, as much as they look and act that way, but victims of the same blood-borne virus that caused people to become full of rage in the original film, turning them into lumbering, mush-brained marauders. Decades later they have morphed. Some, called the Slow-Lows, look like hippos crawling on all fours. Others are faster and smarter than ever. All are naked, caked in dirt, and spout geysers of blood when an arrow hits them. The danger feels visceral. Some stylish flourishes briefly comment on this embattled world. A scratchy, ominous 1915 recording of the Rudyard Kipling poem Boots, about infantrymen, (the same used in the film's trailer) is heard over recurring images of war, from the Crusades to the 20th- Century World Wars. Text at the start of the film tells us that Europe managed to push the virus away, quarantining it in Britain, which has been abandoned by the rest of the world. French and Swedish boats patrol the waters to enforce the quarantine. But that politically acute theme, which might have been so resonant with the issue of isolationism today, goes nowhere. Spike, whose story is so central, is a bland character. A thread of the narrative about the boy and his mother strains for emotion and includes a twist about a pregnant infected woman that is ludicrous even for a horror film. And separated from the original in every way except its source story, for a long stretch the film lands as a more visually stunning, less emotionally rich variation on The Last of Us. But it takes on a quieter, more psychological tone and becomes infinitely better when Fiennes arrives. It's here that Boyle and Garland truly elevate and reimagine the genre. Fiennes's character, Kelton, lives on the mainland and was once a doctor. Spike believes he might be able to help his mother, although Jamie warns that everyone knows Kelton is insane. Fiennes plays him with a shaved head, a dash of wit, and skin that looks orange. "Excuse my appearance. I paint myself in iodine," he politely says when he first meets Spike and Isla. "The virus doesn't like iodine at all." (I did wonder how he got so much iodine after all those apocalyptic years, but let's not be pedantic about it.) And he shows them his lovingly designed temple, with tall columns made of bones elegantly laid out alongside a tower of skulls. It is, he explains, a Memento Mori, a reminder that we all die. Each skull reminds him that it was once part of a living person in the flesh, not a monster. Creepy, yes, but Fiennes also makes Kelton gentle, a man of deep compassion, who regrets that there are no longer hospitals where the sick like Isla can be treated. He is the most humane person on screen, which is largely down to Fiennes's vivid, layered performance. One of the film's strengths is that you can leave debating just how unhinged Kelton really is. 28 Years Later is the first in a projected new trilogy. The second part, written by Garland and directed by Nia DaCosta, has already been shot and is scheduled to be released in January. That one is called 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, an excellent sign considering how Fiennes's character runs away with this imaginative but uneven film. ★★★★☆ 28 Years Later is released in cinemas in the UK and US on 20 June. -- If you liked this story sign up for The Essential List newsletter, a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
Leader Live
4 hours ago
- Leader Live
Jodie Comer says being led by Danny Boyle in 28 Years Later was a ‘proper dream'
Comer, who is best known for playing the antagonist Villanelle in the hit BBC series Killing Eve, was speaking at the 28 Years Later world premiere in Leicester Square on Wednesday evening. 28 Years Later is set in the same world as the 2002 apocalyptic horror 28 Days Later, which saw Cillian Murphy play a bicycle courier who awakes from a coma to discover the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus has caused the breakdown of society. The new instalment follows on almost three decades since the virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, where some have found a way to exist amid the infected despite an enforced quarantine. When one of the group leaves the gated island they are residing on for a mission to the mainland, they discover secrets and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well. Comer features in the film alongside Ralph Fiennes and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Comer said on Wednesday: 'I was honoured when I got this script through. 'And you know, with the opportunity to sit down with Danny, who's a filmmaker who I've admired for a very long time, and to be kind of led by him and be on one of his sets is a proper dream.' She added that Boyle leads a 'calm, playful, fun' set. 28 Years Later will be screened in cinemas from Friday.
