Two key psychological moments in Danny Boyle’s 2002 masterpiece 28 Days Later happens when Jim (Cillian Murphy), Selena (Naomie Harris), and Hannah (Megan Burns) finally reach the compound of survivors run by the autocratic Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston). The first is the realisation by Jim and Selena that they have entered a militarist cult, which by dent of circumstances has formed a ‘new government’ for England. The second is Jim’s uninfected rage filled decimation of the compound wherein the traumatised former bike courier becomes a killing machine in defence of himself and Hannah and Selena. Alex Garland’s script points us to a kind of inevitability; when civilisation crumbles what replaces it is not ‘civilised.’
Although the audience is deeply invested in the fates of the three people who arrived at the compound and rightfully shocked by Major West’s disfigured ‘New Eden,’ watching Jim become a pitiless and violent man is equally shocking. The moment passes and the film rights itself in giving the viewer a more palatable ending with Jim, Selena, and Hannah living peacefully waiting for rescue, but the devolvement in the name of survival is hard to shake off.
In many ways it is this inevitability that Boyle and Garland explore in 28 Years Later. The inhabitants of Holy Island off the coast of Northumbria live in a society that, by necessity, has become agrarian and tightly controlled. A picture of a young Queen Elizabeth adorns the wall of the town hall, and for each child reaching a certain age there is a ‘blooding’ ceremony where they cross the tidal causeway to hunt their first infected on the mainland. For twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams, who channels Dai Bradley as Billy Casper in Kes) who has never known life before the infected became the majority of the population on mainland Britain, the day he goes to the mainland with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the day he becomes a man. Like the many years before the end of World War II (and for many poverty-stricken areas post-WWII), there is no time for teenage years. Child to adult, with obedience to the social order baked in.
Spike’s father is a respected salvager and hunter which places a level of pressure on the boy to perform. Another pressure simmering at home is his mother Isla’s (Jodie Comer) mental and physical health. No longer leaving her bed and often forgetful or moved to extreme emotion, Spike wants to be with Isla as much as he can. Instead, he is being pushed out of the ‘nest’ by Jamie to fly. Failure is not an option. Bow and arrow, and small knife packed as the only weapons: guns have long since disappeared in the almost thirty years since the outbreak and the foreign military enforced quarantine of mainland Britain, Spike and Jamie cross the causeway after the solemn warning that if they do not come back, no one will be sent to look for them.
Over time the infected have also changed, but instead of a regression they are developing a social order with Alphas leading packs. The Alphas are stronger, taller, and faster than the regular infected. The pregnancy of one of the infected suggests that rage is not the only force driving them – they may be evolving. The subsection of bloated and slow crawling infected who consume worms and insects also proves that a hierarchy is emerging.
Horrifically close encounters with both versions of the infected on his first hunt lead to Spike and Jamie staying on the mainland longer than they intended where Spike sees a fire. Have the infected learned basic skills? Or is there someone out there on the mainland who has chosen to stay? Jamie refuses to discuss the fires and the subject is dropped as they deal with an Alpha who chases them across the causeway with a huge murmuration of birds heralding the closeness of death.
28 Years Later is a curious and often confounding work. When it adheres to the family drama and Spike’s decision to seek help for Isla by taking her to the man (a former doctor played by Ralph Fiennes) who used the fire, the film moves in interesting directions. The basic empathetic humanity of Spike and Isla is matched by Fiennes’ iodine covered bone memorial maker Ian Kelson. Something of a creative, patient, and philosophical version of humans survives in the Memento Mori sculptures honouring the dead and reminding the living that they too will pass from the earth.
However, when the film uses Rudyard Kipling’s Boer War poem Boots and weaves in images of twentieth century wars, or flashes to Laurence Olivier’s 1944 Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt, Boyle and Garland appear to be digging at the thread of the English as warmongers of sorts – from the gallant to the ghoulish. There is also the bookending appearance of Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) first encountered as a child (Rocco Haynes) running from the infected breaking into his home to his pastor father who is praising the end of days, and then later leading a track suited group of fighters all with names that come from “Jimmy.” The sequel The Bone Temple directed by Nia DaCosta is being fast tracked to cinemas early next year (28 weeks after the release of 28 Years Later) which will continue on from the final moments. Yet, as a part of the primary film without the promise of the sequel to add explanation, the scene seems random and unwieldy.
The technical aspects are also somewhat arbitrarily applied. When Boyle made 28 Days Later mostly with a Canon XL1 digital video camera it was for the purpose of quick and mobile shooting to create a post-infected London. The choice for Anthony Dod Mantle to shoot sections on a series of iPhone 15s isn’t cohesive nor consistent enough to warrant what appears to be semi-random usage in parts and then more sophisticated cameras in others. Often in the same scene the equipment will change and there is no particular signposting for why.
28 Years Later has its moments of tension with the expected running from the infected, but they are strangely secondary to the puzzle-like narrative. Boyle and Garland aren’t interested in a straight-up survival horror, but what they are interested in may be a little too arcane to come together in something that is clearly a chapter and not a complete experience. The dynamism of the performances of Comer, Fiennes, and especially Alfie Williams whose rapid coming-of-age narrative is the heart of the film, is to be applauded. And, despite the confounding cinematography, the film for the most part is impressively lush and creepy – winding its way closer to a folk horror aesthetic than a ‘zombie’ film.
28 Years Later is both excellent and frustrating and the reason from that comes from the same place: Garland’s reticence to commit his full thesis to the film’s script, and Boyle’s shift into a new Arcadia for his vision of Britain that only occasionally reminds the viewer that the survivors are prisoners living in an era where appendicitis is once again fatal and the ravenous infected who still hunger in their rage.
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes
Writer: Alex Garland
Producers: Bernard Bellew, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland, Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice
Composer: Young Fathers
Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle
Editor: Jon Harris
Screening or Streaming Availability:
