28 YEARS LATER (Danny Boyle 2025)

[Chris Knipp]

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON, ALFIE WILLIAMS IN 28 YEARS LATER

DANNY BOYLE: 28 YEARS LATER (2025)

A brave boy in zombieland

The makers of 28 Days Later, penned by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, which was a massive hit 23 years ago, are back with their own sequel now, with some significant changes. There was a mid-way sequel 28 Weeks Later, directed by another hand, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, in 2007. The running theme of the "Rage Virus," which was so alive in the original - it derived fom wild caged monkeys; but now only a few years from a real pandemic, it may have more resonance. This new iteration didn't work very well for me for several reasons. There just didn't seem to be enough forward movement and suspense. There were distracting shifts of tone. Shock-clips from multiple sources make this seem like somebody else's anthology movie. They include historical clips, documentary images of Nazi parades, and Olivier's Henry V. On the plus side, thre are some excellent actors and the use of much nimbler cameras, including a 20-camera iPhone rig, makes for fresh images.

A deserted London was a key image in 28 Days Later but this time ciies don't figure. Instead the "uninfected" are holed up on Holy Island. This is separated from the green and scepter'd isle by a causeway, crossable only at low tide. Over there, it's all "the infected," who take two forms: the Alphas, scrawny, bloody fast runners, and the Slow Lows, fat oozy ground crawlers that eat worms. A man, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his young teenage son Spike (Alfie Williams) cross over to the mainland with their community's main weapon, bows and arrows, mainly as a rite of passage for the boy to show his mettle by killing some of the infected who roam freely there.

This is not a story to show us raging zombies. It's a boy's coming-of-age tale. Spike afterwards, on return to the quarantined island, is disillusioned by the lies his father tells about how he, Spike, was very brave, whereas he knows he was too scared to land any of his arrows successfully and bring down infected. Spike turns against his father and essentially disowns him. Instead,with his experience of the harroying journey onto the mainland he takes his ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer) back over the causeway to seek out a real doctor known to be there, who turns out to be Ralph Fiennes (as Dr.Kelson).

The boy Spike is the moral center and hero of this film so it's very lucky that Alfie Williams is a terrific actor, with a stillness and realness about him that you remember. Another star of the film is the green land of England, where it was shot. Jodie Comer has been called "subtle" as Isla and I won't argue with that. Ralph Fiennes of course is Ralph Fiennes: he does his job impeccably. Dr. Kelson, who goes swobbed all over with iodine (whereever he gets that) because it resists the virus, is an odd character. He has no good news for Spike about his hazy, confused, weak mum's condition and of course whatever she has, there are no treatments available, only his expertise.

But Dr. Kelson's main project is maintaining a tower of human skulls as a "MEMENTO MORI." He explains to Spike - Latin isn't surviving the apocalypse - that this means "remember you must die" or "reminder of death," and he also introduces the Latin phrase "MEMENTO AMORI," which is much less heard and means "remember love" or "remember to love." Dr. Kelson has had a funny way of creating the memento mori mountain of skulls, and he has a funny way of dealing with Isla's serious condition. Desperate situations lead to desperate, as well as oddball and morally dubious, measures.

28 Years Later is very British. The arrangements of the islands with the same one being small and quarantined is acknowledged to refer to Brexit; it's understtood that Europe and the rest of the world have eluded the Rage Virus. This an English film with English actors. When Spike is on the island on his own there's a more insider English detail of signficance that will elude most Americans. (I'm indebted to Esther Zuckerman of Vanity Fair for these details.) He encounters a horde of infected, who start to overpower him. Then a mysterious man comes to the rescue. He’s wearing a tracksuit and a blonde wig, and he calls himself Jimmy. He’s played by Jack O’Connell—who "is having quite a year playing creepy guys, between this and Sinners," Esther notes. Thankless roles for one of the best English actors of his generation.

And an odd way to end. But Jack O'Connell's character, Sir Jimmy Crystal, and his group of like-uniformed henchmen, are a setup for the sequel of this film, the upcomiing 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. As Vanity Fair explains), Jimmy Crystal and his men are dressed to look like a famous British figure in very dubious taste: Jimmy Savile, "the once adored British television presenter who was posthumously accused of committing hundreds of instances of sexual abuse, many of which involved children." So the end is not only odd, but creepy, though perhaps iadvertently. This is one of various references American viewers may miss. What works are the basics: the spunky kid, the dubious dad, the ailing mother. There is humanity here. There just isn't the shimmer of monstrosity we look for in this sort of film.

29 Years Later, 115 mins., opened in the US June 20, 2025. Metacritic rating: 76%.