Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson anchor a nightmarish vision of doomed survival
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Twenty-three years ago, Academy Award-winning English director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”), coming off his acclaimed hit “Trainspotting” (1996) and his somewhat less successful drama “The Beach” (2000), joined “Beach” co-writer Alex Garland (“Civil War”) to give the zombie-movie business a jolt in the arm with the smash hit “28 Days Days Later” (2002). Did I mention that it starred a certain Academy Award-winning Irish actor named Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”)?
“28 Days Later” introduced the world to the “rage virus” and fast-moving zombies and was yet another case of a visionary filmmaker giving us something usually churned out by schlockmeisters. For many, it was a glorious throwback to those British Quatermass films (and the TV series) that continue to win the hearts and minds of sci-fi and horror cultists. In 2007, we had “28 Weeks Later,” a hit sequel directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and led by Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne and Robert Carlyle.
This new “28 Years Later,” once again directed by Boyle and scripted by Garland, opens with a perverse scene. Young children are gathered in a room, watching or not watching the Teletubbies on TV. Some of the kids are sobbing. Adults come into the room to tell them to be quiet. It does not end well.
Cut to a small island off the coast of Britain (the film was shot on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne off England). When the tide is out, the island is connected to the mainland by a wet, narrow causeway guarded on the island side by armed men and women and a gate.
In the village, young Spike (a remarkable Alfie Williams) lives with his beautiful, ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer) and his young, lustful father Jamie (Aaron-Taylor Johnson). Jamie takes 12-year-old Spike on an arguably premature rite-of-passage trip to the mainland, where Spike tries out his archery fighting skills on a slow-moving, monstrous crawler. Soon, things get much more dangerous.
In a relatively weak dramatic twist, Spike decides to take his mother back to the mainland alone, surely a suicidal journey, because he learns that there is a strange man who was once a doctor there. Maybe he can help Spike’s mom. The film is further marred by other unlikely twists, but only to a certain extent.
Boyle intercuts black-and-white archival footage of children during wartime “hard times” in Britain. We see clips from Laurence Olivier’s morale-boosting 1944 version of “Henry V.” We hear sirens on the soundtrack. Someone says, “Don’t miss the tide,” and a horn sounds eerily like the “All clear” signal from the great 1960 George Pal film version of “The Time Machine.” Morlocks, anyone? There is a voice on the soundtrack sometimes. Who is it? Boyle adds another dream-like layer to the film, enhancing the numerous nightmarish chases that feature fully frontal, naked zombies. Yes, there is an emaciated, infected creature resembling Murphy. Herds of elk thunder across paradoxically pastoral meadows. In another scene on an abandoned train, we see a naked infected woman who is pregnant.
Among the infected are “alpha” males big enough to pull the head and spine out of a human body. There are enough screaming birds, including a ravenous raven feasting on a body hanging upside down, to make Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (1963) twice over. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, err, I mean the Swedish Navy in the form of a freaked-out soldier-survivor named Erik (Edvin Ryding).
Ralph Fiennes makes his entrance as the former physician Dr. Kelson (Is that the best they could do?), pronouncing the word “iodine” as “ee-o-deene” and covered in it (it’s a virus defense, he explains). Holy “Apocalypse Now,” Kelson has been building an outdoor “temple of bones” for decades with a mound of skulls at its heart (Another sequel, “28 Days Later: The Bone Temple,” with Taylor-Johnson and Murphy is slated for January 2026 from Sony). Kelson has a blowgun with a morphine-tipped dart. Ee-o-deene Kelson, the film’s Grim Reaper, airily praises “the magic of the placenta.” The story ends with the promise of more fast-moving zombies to come. I’m doomscrolling already.
’28 Years Later’
Rating: R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, graphic nudity, language and brief sexuality.
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Alfie Williams, Ralph Fiennes
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Running time: 115 minutes
Where to watch: in theaters
Grade: B+
Boston Movie News 