Now THAT’s a Danny Boyle Movie I can get behind! After the Trainspotting sequel misfire and Beatles calamity, I was curious if the once great director could hit the highs he gave me, and frankly, most moviegoers, early and often in the 2000s. When you’re lost in the woods, just go find the skull forest I guess, even if Boyle had to find it 28 Years Later than we wanted him to. Ok I lied: it’s actually 23 years later, he’s ahead of schedule!
Since the events of 28 Weeks Later, England has become a quarantined island cut off from the rest of the world. Despite being stuck out of time, Holy Island lives a relatively peaceful existence, loosely connected to mainland England via a well defended low tide causeway. Part of community rite of passage there is traveling to the mainland when you’re a teenager to learn how to kill the “Infected”. On this movie’s journey goes Spike (Alfie Williams) and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Spike hopes this training will give him a chance to help find answers to what is ailing his mother Isla (Jodie Comer), especially as the boy hears slip of his father mentioning an older doctor Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who may or may not live near the fire burning Spike witnesses to the South West during his maiden voyage onto the mainland.
Boyle and writer Alex Garland repeat the general beats that worked on 2002’s 28 Days Later, but with the advantage of time. The first half of Years is devoted to resetting the audience for the new world we’re in, through Spike’s eyes. The Infected have evolved since we last saw them, forming a quasi level of fear that increases as Spike encounters them. Boyle has you on edge from minute one, knowing we’re with a child who’s never encountered any of this before, like, say, an 18 year old at his first r rated film? The amazing director amps up the tension with his flair for the visual. We get the dirty, visceral horrors of the cruelty of the real world, but then juxtaposed by Boyle’s incredible eye for the darkly beautiful, including one shot that merges this series with his space epic Sunshine in glorious ominous delights.
But Boyle and Garland are not content to just make a normal zombie movie. And so we enter the bold 2nd half, where the great directors and writers are made. 28 Years Later makes a few daring swings here, that somehow walk the line between being gross and unwatchable to immediately compelling and shockingly emotional. This is in great part thanks to the incredible set design and practical effects, in another part to the Boyle/Garland storytelling, and mostly because of the incredible performances from Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, and Ralph Fiennes, who keep these daring choices from destroying the movie, and turn them into real though provoking material that will sit with the audience Boyle and Garland have them fully invested in.
28 Years Later helps plant us in something familiar, and something new at the same time. The door is left open for more stories to be told by the end. There’s always more societal ills to address, as well as diving deeper into the human condition through inhuman rabid monsters. And I’m not just talking about Stephen Miller. Zing!