Ready or Not It's "28 Years Later"

I originally intended to pair this review together with another horror film, but once I started writing it, I kept finding more that I wanted to say, so here we are.  

I was never a fan of Danny Boyle's zombie film "28 Days Later," or really that whole wave of zombie media that started in the early 2000s and never really went away.  However, the reteaming of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland for "28 Years Later" is an event worth paying attention to,  especially since this is their first collaboration since 2007's "Sunshine."  When "28 Days Later" came out, it was a departure from the zombie genre, with its fast-moving "Infected" and pointed political commentary.  It's only natural that "28 Years Later" should also be a departure, slowly introducing us to a vastly changed United Kingdom that is quarantined from the rest of the world. 

The tiny island community of Lindisfarne survives in isolation, because it is naturally protected from the English mainland by a causeway that is only accessible at low tide.  Twelve year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) makes his first trip over the causeway with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) for a coming-of-age ceremony, where he learns to fight and kill the Infected.  Learning that there's a doctor who might be living in the area, Spike decides to get help for his mother Isla (Jodie Comer), who is afflicted by some unknown illness, and becoming more and more mentally unsound.  The story is told largely from Spike's POV as he learns more and more about the state of the overrun UK and the rest of the world, and becomes acclimated to living with the reality of death so close at hand.  

All the expected elements of a zombie film are present here, including several chase and kill sequences.  There are some particularly gnarly ones in "28 Years Later" involving splattery dismemberments and close quarters violence.  However, what Boyle and Garland are really after is depicting Spike's loss of innocence and subsequent spiritual awakening within this environment.  The depiction of the violence is often heightened, with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle using a lot of handheld camera, jump cuts, freeze-frames, and jarring editing.  Quieter sequences will incorporate fragmentary clips of unrelated prior Infected attacks and other existing media, showing where the characters' thoughts are, and invoking spectres of the Infected and the pre-Infected world long before Spike actually encounters them.  There's an especially chilling montage set to a recitation of Rudyard Kipling's "Boots" featuring clips of men at war, accompanying father and son as they set out into the unknown.  This makes for a zombie film that has one foot in arthouse and one foot in grindhouse, and it mostly works.  

What's especially interesting is the introduction of a strong spiritual element in this universe for the first time.  An allegory for the downfall of religion is presented in the opening sequence, a flashback to the original Infected attacks in 2002, where a young boy watches the invasion and destruction of a church.  Over the course of the film we see elements of its return, with a virgin birth analog, several potential Christ figures, and the invocation of memento mori as a central tenet.  There's also a very obvious Antichrist figure at the end of the film, setting up a forthcoming "28 Years Later" sequel. 

The worldbuilding is very good, with most of "28 Years Later" taking place in picturesque woodlands and largely deserted areas.  The Infected have changed along with their environment, and there are multiple encounters to show us their behavior and in different contexts.  Human beings, of course, have also changed, and one of the few humorous moments in the film involves Spike encountering a lost Swedish soldier (Edvin Ryding) who struggles to find common ground with someone who has never heard of the internet.  

Finally, I want to express my appreciation that Boyle and his collaborators have kept "28 Years Later" such a very UK film, drawing from a specific pool of influences and references from British history and pop culture.  There are nods to the Teletubbies, Jimmy Saville, and "Kes."  Sir Lawrence Olivier is now technically in a zombie movie, via one of the montages, and it feels oddly appropriate.  

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