Latest news with #DannyBoyle
ABC News
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
28 Years Later sees Danny Boyle re-animate his 'infected' in 28 Days Later sequel
It hasn't quite been 28 years since a bleary-eyed Cillian Murphy drifted onto the streets of a deserted London, in 2002's 28 Days Later, which redefined the zombie film for a new millennium. What: A 12-year-old member of a secluded island community ventures into zombie-infected Britain. Starring: Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson Directed by: Danny Boyle Likely to make you feel: Like the wait was worth it Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland flooded Britain with a 'rage virus' that evolved the undead from a shuffling, slow-burn threat into a frenzied foe. Its frenetic editing and MiniDV cinematography established the visual hallmarks for a paranoid era of post-9/11 horror. The timing of the film's sequel, 28 Years Later, now in Australian cinemas, feels apt. Zombie films have found major commercial success in recent decades but, creatively, they've stalled. The fast zombies and gritty survivalist narrative of Boyle's original film have been endlessly recycled. It's telling that the most popular example of the genre, HBO's The Last of Us, is an adaptation of a 2013 video game. If the apocalypse was a fun hypothetical to consider in the early 2010s — the peak of zombie saturation — the pandemic has made societal collapse a more immediate reality. Boyle, now 68 years old, has lost little of the apoplectic fury that charged his pioneering classic. 28 Years Later begins on a secluded island whose inhabitants have successfully weathered the few decades since the rage virus broke containment. The fortified community is connected to mainland Britain via a low-lying coastal path, where villagers go to gather resources — and, in the case of 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), score a first infected kill. As part of his coming-of-age rite, Spike's father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nosferatu), accompanies him for his first encounter with the undead. Their mission quickly goes sideways when they encounter an Alpha, a mutated variant with colossal strength and a pack of underlings under command. The mainland is also revealed to be home to Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes, Conclave), a doctor branded as a madman by the villagers for his unconventional handling of the undead but, potentially, the only hope for Spike's mother, Isla (Jodie Comer, Killing Eve), whose mind and body have been wracked by a mysterious disease. The first stretch of the film is an effectively nervy exercise in folk horror but it's not immediately clear why, after so many years, Boyle and Garland decided to revisit this world. Save for some flashes of clever world-building (the village being comprised of die-hard Queen Liz royalists is a bleakly hilarious touch), the expanded scope of 28 Years Later initially stays confined to well-trodden genre territory. Cultish enclaves are a persistent rash in the post-apocalypse, while the virus's Alpha mutation is a cliché better suited to video games. One of the early surprises is that, with the scarcity of human flesh, some of the sprinting zombies of yore have now been reduced to a crawl. The transition from MiniDV's hypnotically hazy textures to iPhone cinematography makes for an intriguing stylistic refresh, if not a revolutionary one. In the hands of returning DP Anthony Dod Mantle (who steered the early digital innovations of the Dogme 95 movement), the iPhone 15 Max footage lends an eerie unreality to the film, visible in its deep focus, wide angles and sharp edges, the horizon hanging oppressively across the overgrown landscape. Unlike a typical phone recording, the image is stretched into a panoramic aspect ratio (usually reserved for Hollywood epics), while colours are intensified into irradiated hues. It's an astonishing advertisement for what consumer electronics are capable of nowadays, though the film resists some of the more idiosyncratic limitations of pocket cameras. There's a noticeable shift away from its scrappy, low-budget origins, with the occasional use of drones and expensive cinema cameras adding an additional sheen to its exterior. The particulars of Spike's narrative are better left to be discovered, especially as the film saves its most tantalising ideas for its final stretch; an imminent follow-up, directed by Candyman's Nia Da Costa, is set for release in just seven months, leaving this legacy sequel feeling a little incomplete. The human story of 28 Years Later is surprisingly compelling in its own right and, unlike the broader expansion of this world, is kept satisfyingly contained. Fiennes utterly commands the third act of the film with a unique take on Dr Kelson's enigmatic, Kurtz-like figure, whose towering monuments to death comprise the film's most striking imagery. If rage fuelled the early days of the virus outbreak, grief is now the guiding light through its long-term ravages. Amid the exorbitant displays of brutality, death is treated with an unexpected tenderness that raises 28 Years Later to new emotional heights within the genre. After a character has their spinal cord ripped from their body, we observe in great detail as their head is thrust into a kiln, scrubbed free of its charred scalp, and washed. You'll have to trust me when I say it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. 28 Years Later is in cinemas now.
News.com.au
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Viewers divided over hit new film 28 Years Later's ‘bananas' ending
WARNING: 28 YEARS SPOILERS AHEAD. Danny Boyle's long-awaited return to the 28 Days Late r franchise, 28 Years Later, is getting rave reviews since its release last week – but the film's final minutes are leaving viewers divided, fiercely debating whether it's a genius or a terrible end to an otherwise powerful film. The third film in the series, 28 Years is set – as the name would suggest – 28 years after a 'rage virus' swept England, turning everyone in its path into murderous zombies. The film tells the story of Spike (Alfie Williams), as he joins his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on his first trip from their small island home to the mainland, where he'll start practising his skills dispatching the undead. It's a tense, gory, and at times heart-stopping journey, with some spectacular sequences, including a night time chase as an 'Alpha' zombie tails them all the way back to their fortified island, the pair narrowly escaping a grisly death. The film takes a sharp turn in its final act to something altogether more contemplative, as Spike ventures to the mainland again, this time with his ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer), seeking the help of a doctor who's somehow managed to survive out there for all these years (he's played by Ralph Fiennes in a standout role). But – and here are those spoilers for the very end of 28 Years Later – after what feels like a natural end point to the film, it takes another sharp turn for one final scenes. Young Spike has decided he still has some growing up to do, and returns once more to the mainland to camp, hunt and live off the land alone. He's cornered by a bunch of zombies when suddenly, out of nowhere, a whole new gang of (uninfected) people turn up and the film's tone drastically changes. The gang is run by 'Sir Jimmy Crystal' (Jack O'Connell), dressed in a lairy tracksuit, his hair dyed blonde, and dripping in jewels. His disciples are all dressed in similar uniforms. It's a marked contrast to everyone we've seen so far in the film – from the mostly-naked zombies, their clothes having rotted away, to the inhabitants of the island, all dressed like medieval peasants. The gang tell Spike to stand back so they can expertly kill off the approaching zombies – which they do with moves that are part Power Rangers, part Monkey Magic (seriously, they spend more time doing backflips and karate chops than actually killing). The film ends there, with the suggestion that Spike will now fall in with Sir Jimmy and his gang, grateful for their protection. But it doesn't really feel like Spike's actually found safety, given that everyone in the group, who called themselves 'the Jimmys,' have marked resemblance to Jimmy Savile, a beloved children's TV presenter who was exposed as perhaps one of Britain's most prolific predatory sex offenders after his death in 2011. That tonally bizarre final two minutes drew puzzled laughter in my screening of the film last week (among them, surely many who didn't make the Savile connection) – and it's proved extremely divisive among viewers. First – who are the Jimmys? It appears this wasn't clear to everyone who saw the film, but the key to Sir Jimmy's identity lies in 28 Years Later' s opening scene. It's set back in 2002, as the outbreak first sweeps Britain. A group of children sit huddled in a living room, Teletubbies on the TV, as their parents fret on the other side of the door about the looming threat of the infected. Suddenly, a zombie breaks into the home and horror sweeps the house, as parents and children quickly succumb to the virus. One young boy manages to escape and flees to a nearby church, where he takes shelter as the priest is descended on by the infected horde. That young boy is 'Sir Jimmy Crystal,' 28 years earlier. Viewers have suggested this opening scene not only revealed his identity, but gives a reason for the bizarre look and demeanour of Sir Jimmy and his gang. If life and culture as you know it stopped in 2002 when you were a small child, but you managed to survive, wouldn't you fight zombies like a Power Ranger? More disturbingly – would you dress you and your gang like Jimmy Savile, still then a beloved children's entertainer, a decade before he was posthumously hit with multiple allegations of sexual offences? Viewers divided 'The ending of #28YearsLater is so hilariously f**king weird, you guys. I'm legit at a loss for words. So, so weird,' tweeted one viewer. Another called the final two minutes of the film 'one of the most insane tonal shifts,' while others called it 'bananas.' 'Absolutely dug the f**k out of the bonkers ending. I know it may be divisive for some but I am SOOOOOO here for it!' shared one fan. Others were less thrilled at the gang of Jimmy Savile Power Rangers saving the day. 'Danny Boyle what the f**k,' was one viewer's succint verdict. Another called the final scene 'disappointing', while others questioned if the reference would fly over most viewers' heads: 'I didn't expect to watch 28 Years Later & having to research about Jimmy Savile, who I'm assuming the vast majority of non-British viewers have no idea who the hell the man is or what he represents … Such a bananas manner of ending your movie,' tweeted one viewer. Will there be a sequel? I at least understood the ending a little better once I left the cinema, Googled the movie and realised that it was in fact a set-up for another film in the franchise – one that's coming very soon. 28 Years Later was shot back-to-back with its sequel, The Bone Temple, which is set to be released on 16 January 2026. The film will focus on Spike and Sir Jimmy, and will also return OG star Cillian Murphy to the franchise, reprising his role as Jim (yes, another Jim) from the original film.
Gizmodo
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
'28 Years Later' Filmmakers Break Down That Controversial Surprise Ending
The ending of 28 Years Later flips the entire movie on its head. After almost two hours of dread and pain, the film ends on a high-energy, seemingly out-of-left-field action sequence that leaves almost every audience member scratching their head. What the hell was that? What is the point? Well, clearly, you can interpret it however you'd like, but director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland do have some thoughts on the the film, the main character Spike leaves his protected home to fend for himself on the mainland. Quickly, he's almost run over by zombies, only to be saved by a group of jumpsuit-wearing killers led by Jimmy, the grown-up kid from the opening of the movie, played by Jack O'Connell. Jimmy, as you may remember, is a character we first meet watching TV shows like Teletubbies in the early 2000s when the Rage Virus took over the UK. He watched his family die and has had to survive on his own ever since. The timing there is crucial because 28 Years Later Jimmy is a purposeful reference to Jimmy Savile, one of the most notorious pedophiles in British history. Savile was a super popular media personality for decades, working with children on the make-a-wish-esque series Jim'll Fix It. But then, after his death in 2011, it was revealed that he was a horrific sex offender, assaulting hundreds of minors and adults over the course of his career. In the world of 28 Years Later, though, that public revelation never would have happened—28 Years' opening is set in 2002, Savile's crimes were public exposed in 2012—and so the film is commenting on history and perception in a very specific, very British way. 'He's as much to do with pop culture as he is to do with sportswear, to do with cricket, to do with the honors system,' Boyle told Business Insider. 'It's all kind of twisting in this partial remembrance, clinging onto things and then recreating them as an image for followers.' 'He's a kaleidoscope, isn't he, in a funny way,' Garland added. 'A sort of trippy, fucked up kaleidoscope.' So, in the movie, Jimmy of the film is presented as someone who was a fan of Savile, based his entire look on the person, but never learned the truth about him. Which is exactly the twisted point. 'The whole film, and if we ever get to make it, the whole trilogy, is in some ways about looking back and looking forwards,' Garland said. 'And the relationship between looking forward to better worlds or attempting to make better worlds, or trying to construct the world that you're in on the basis of old worlds, so there's sort of contrast or conflict between the two. And the thing about looking back is how selective memory is and that it cherry picks and it has amnesia, and crucially it also misremembers—and we are living in a time right now which is absolutely dominated by a misremembered past. And so it's that.' And so, history in this universe misremembered Jimmy Savile, which sets the stage for what's to come. '[The ending] is about reintroducing evil into what has been a compassionate environment,' Boyle explained to the Independent. 'I asked Alex right at the beginning [of the writing process] to tell me the nature of each of the films. He said that the first film is about the nature of family. The second film is about the nature of evil.' Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Geek Tyrant
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
28 YEARS LATER Brings in $60M Worldwide While Pixar's ELIO Limps Through Worst Opening Ever — GeekTyrant
Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later hit theaters this week, and while it didn't explode out of the gate like a rage-infected virus, it still managed to pull in a solid $60 million worldwide on its opening weekend, split evenly between $30M domestic and $30M international. That's not a bad start for an R-rated horror sequel that took some big bonkers swings. With a reported $75 million production budget, the film doesn't have a huge mountain to climb, and strong reviews have certainly helped. Still, it's a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to audience reception. The real test for 28 Years Later will be staying power. Meanwhile, over in the land of PG-rated aliens and heartstring-tugging animation, Pixar's Elio stumbled hard. It opened to just $21 million domestic and $35 million globally, which is a record low for the animation studio. Yes, worse than The Good Dinosaur . Worse than Onward , which opened days before COVID shut down theaters. This is officially Pixar's weakest box office debut ever. The movie is actually really good, and it had solid reviews and a heartfelt story, but something didn't connect. I imagine the weak marketing campaign played a role. Then you have that Pixar animation style and character design that doesn't quite pop. Or, maybe there's Pixar fatigue? Whatever the case, the studio poured $150 million into Elio , and recouping that kind of money is going to be a struggle. Adding to Disney's uneven weekend, the live-action Lilo & Stitch remake pulled in another $9.7 million, putting it at $386.7 million domestic and $910 million worldwide. It's not a critical darling, but it's marching toward the billion-dollar club with surprising consistency. 28 Years Later has a pulse and could pick up steam. Elio has tripped at the starting line, and Lilo & Stitch might be the unexpected juggernaut Disney didn't see coming.
Telegraph
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
28 Years Later's incendiary Jimmy Savile twist: All your questions, answered
Contains spoilers for 28 Years Later Now then, now then. When I attended a press screening for 28 Years Later the week before release, a note sent with the tickets asked us not to spoil the ending in our reviews. This is a common ploy by publicists seeking to build buzz and intrigue, and often the result is disappointing. (Think a Marvel character you've never heard of appearing for 15 seconds.) However, when Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's excellent zombie epic ends with the introduction of Jack O'Connell's character Sir Jimmy Crystal and his band of murderous desperadoes, all of whom are dressed in colour-coded outfits that come over as a cross between the Power Rangers and the infamous Jimmy Savile, to the accompaniment of the Teletubbies ' 'One, two, three, four!' on the soundtrack, it is a jaw-droppingly provocative and incendiary ending. For once, it really did need to be left for audiences to discover it for themselves, rather than having it spoilt by critics. The film makes great play of (specifically British) audiences' knowledge of the chilling spectacle of Savile, a DJ, presenter of the wish-fulfilment show Jim'll Fix It and, we now know, notorious rapist, paedophile and suspected necrophile. He has become rightly despised as one of the most evil men that Britain has ever seen since his death in 2011. Even during his lifetime, and fame, there was clearly something not right about him. Savile would make black humoured jokes about how he had only evaded detection for his many crimes because of his charity work – jokes that no longer seem very funny – and took an almost perverse pride in how his closeness to the establishment allowed him to groom and assault his victims with impunity. Overseas audiences will inevitably know less about him, and so should probably watch the comprehensive 2022 Netflix documentary Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, which explores his crimes in sickening depth. Perhaps surprisingly, he has been largely kept out of fiction. A recent Steve Coogan drama, The Reckoning, explored his grim life and depraved antics, and it was also suggested in series three of Line of Duty that the character was somehow involved with the (fictitious) details of child sexual abuse as depicted in the show. However, film-makers know that accusations of opportunism and bad taste might be made if he was to be included in mainstream drama. These accusations have now indeed been levelled, in some quarters, against 28 Years Later and its makers. To say that the ending has proved divisive, especially in the United States, would be an understatement. (Not that the twist has hurt the film's box office performance; half its $60 million opening weekend haul has come from the US.) Yet Boyle and Garland have never been film-makers who have taken the easy option – think about the various outrageous and shocking scenes in their films, encompassing everything from Trainspotting and Ex Machina to their previous collaborations, Sunshine and 28 Days Later – and so this full-strength conclusion to the picture not only sets up next year's sequel, The Bone Temple, very intriguingly, but also leaves audiences with numerous questions which deserve answering. Who are Sir Jimmy Crystal and his gang? The introduction of the presumably villainous Sir Jimmy in the closing moments of 28 Years Later gives an already unsettling film a horrific jolt. As he and his companions – also all referred to as 'Jimmy' – set about murdering a group of 'infected', as the film terms its zombies, with extreme, gleeful prejudice, it's a grim and shocking moment that brings A Clockwork Orange – a clear Boyle touchstone throughout his career – to mind. Yet the most disturbing aspect of the scene is that Sir Jimmy, and the other Jimmys, are all attired in hideous-coloured tracksuits, lengthy blonde wigs and have their hands festooned with jewellery: a clear homage to Savile. O'Connell – who, with his appearance as a sadistic Irish vampire in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, is surely becoming 2025's go-to villain for horror films – is too big a star to appear for as small a role as this. Audiences are promised that the Jimmys will return in a big way for The Bone Temple. When Sir Jimmy says to Alfie Williams's young protagonist Spike 'Let's be friends', the moment is chilling, not least because it seems quite clear that the Jimmys are not the kind of people anyone would want to be friends with. Yet the film has already teased his introduction with enormous sophistication. It's the young Jimmy who we meet in the terrifying prologue, set, appropriately enough, 28 years before the rest of the film. The boy is the sole survivor of the Teletubbies-inflected infected massacre and the recipient of his fanatical clergyman father's crucifix, which he's seen holding when he's reintroduced. There are lots of hints as to his reappearance, too, which many viewers may only pick up on with a second viewing. When Spike and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) head to the mainland for Spike's first kill of an infected, they find the body of a tortured figure hung up upside-down in an abandoned farmhouse, with the word 'Jimmy' carved onto it; the same word is scrawled all over the outside walls. From these little clues, it's quite clear that the Jimmy gang is a bunch of murderous sadists who are intent on causing as much mayhem and torment as they can. How and why, and how they've managed to survive for so long amidst the infected, will (presumably) be explained in the second film. Why are the Jimmys in thrall to Jimmy Savile? Although the Jimmy characters are not named in the film, the end credits reveal that they all have a suitably grim collection of surnames. We can expect to meet Jimmy Fox, Jimmy Snake, Jimmy Jones, the unimaginatively named Jimmy Jimmy, the more imaginatively named Jimmy S___e and their female equivalent, Jimmina. No doubt all of them are going to play a greater role in the sequel, but the small clues that we are given about their dispositions in 28 Years Later are that they're violent, have hideous taste in clothes and are all followers of O'Connell's Sir Jimmy: a self-bestowed title, unlike the knighthood bestowed upon Savile. It isn't made clear in this picture as to why they should all be fascinated by the ghoulish disc jockey and TV presenter, but Boyle and Garland have suggested in interviews that it all fits with the film's warped sense of England and Englishness. As Boyle told Business Insider: '[Savile is] as much to do with pop culture as he is to do with sportswear, to do with cricket, to do with the honours system. It's all kind of twisting in this partial remembrance, clinging onto things and then recreating them as an image for followers.' (Incidentally, Boyle himself was offered a knighthood after directing the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, and turned it down, saying 'it was insensitive of them to ask me, to be honest.') 🎬 | Bts photo of Erin Kellyman with the Jimmy gang on the set of '28 Years Later'. — Erin Kellyman Updates (@updateskellyman) June 23, 2025 Yet there's another telling detail that has been picked up on by eagle-eyed viewers who have been swift to disseminate it on Reddit forums. The film's prologue takes place around the same time that the first film was released, in the early years of the millennium, when Savile may have been regarded with suspicion (see the 2000 Louis Theroux documentary When Louis Met Jimmy) but was still seen by many (at least publicly) as a noble figure who had given his life, and fortune, to charity. Therefore, in this alternative world, Savile was never unmasked as a predator, but instead continued to be regarded as a hero by many, meaning that the 'Jimmys' are not following in the footsteps of a disgraced and evil man, but instead believe him to be a secular saint of sorts. That the audience knows differently is all part of the intrigue. As one commenter observed, 'I like the theory that they think Jim will fix it as per the TV show and save them from the infected.' What is the point of the Savile allusion? When the Jimmys appear, it's a deliberately shocking moment, both in terms of the violence and then the realisation that there might be worse things out there than the infected. This is something of a homage to the original 28 Days Later, when it becomes clear that Christopher Eccleston's demented army major and his men want to force female survivors of the infected into sexual slavery for their own perverse ends. Yet Boyle and Garland are both careful film-makers who would never include a detail as provocative as this simply to elicit a shocked reaction. Instead, Garland has argued that the ending is of a piece with the rest of the film's themes. He suggested that Savile was a 'trippy, f----- up kaleidoscope', which chimes with the film's similarly phantasmagorical evocation of Englishness, visual throwbacks to Olivier's Henry V and Agincourt included. Yet it's also because the Jimmy character – who has obviously been traumatised from a young age by seeing his friends and family torn to pieces by infected – has created his own version of reality from a mixture of half-remembered pop culture allusions, just as Alex in A Clockwork Orange is inspired in his ultraviolence by everything from Beethoven to Singin' in the Rain. 'The thing about looking back is how selective memory is,' Garland has said. 'It cherry picks and it has amnesia, and crucially, it also misremembers. We are living in a time right now which is absolutely dominated by a misremembered past.' Why is the ending so controversial? In the United States, where Savile is barely known, if at all, the ending has caused significant confusion and even disappointment amongst audiences, who have been mystified as to who these shell-suit wearing, blonde wigged antagonists are supposed to be. As one cinemagoer sighed on X, 'I personally don't appreciate having to do some homework to appreciate a sequence that's otherwise random to end a film.' It is also a (deliberately?) confusing aspect of the picture that the Aaron Taylor-Johnson character's name of 'Jamie' is close enough to 'Jimmy' for many viewers initially to believe that he is the grown-up version of the boy in the opening scene, safely escaped and now living in what seems to be comparative safety. The other argument against the ending, and what it sets up for the next film, is simply that the appropriation of Savile as a pop-cultural feature is inappropriate and tasteless. Certainly, the film's anti-Brexit subtext, suggesting that Britain is an isolated, backwards island that has been cut off from Europe by force, is unlikely to endear it to those who continue to think Brexit was a good and necessary idea. (Boyle and Garland are clearly not Brexiteers.) Hinting that this isolation has led to the creation of Savile cultists is a provocative and deeply controversial way to conclude the film. Finally, the jolt of black humour that comes moments after the deeply affecting conclusion of the storyline involving Spike's dying mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is an incongruous way to conclude the film that will be a true love-hate development. There will be those who believe that its kamikaze insanity ruins an otherwise thoughtful and serious film, and others who applaud its audacity. What does all this mean for the sequel? The choice of Candyman and the Marvels film-maker Nia DaCosta to direct the sequel, The Bone Temple – which has already been filmed and will be released in January – is an intriguing decision, given that DaCosta is a New York-raised American director who is tackling the follow-up to a film about Britain and Britishness. However, the idea that DaCosta will bring an outsider's eye to a film that Boyle has already teased is about 'the nature of evil' can only be a good thing. Just as Boyle brought his own inimitable perspective to the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (a film that, for understandable but regrettable reasons, he now claims he would not direct if he was offered the opportunity), so DaCosta has a chance to take the Savile-heavy mythology that The Bone Temple will inevitably be imbued with and make it not only comprehensible to American audiences but terrifying. Savile may be a British phenomenon but the traits that he embodied – the manipulation of power and what evil can be unchecked if those in positions of authority look the other way – are truly universal ones, and this brief tease should be a curtain-raiser for something extraordinarily dark and provocative, coming our way in a few months.
