28 Years Later Review: The Otherwise Visually Stunning and Well-Acted Horror Mostly Misses the Mark
It sure feels like an eternity waiting for 28 Years Later, a direct sequel to Danny Boyle’s then-groundbreaking 28 Days Later. The first movie, which was released over 20 years ago, redefined the zombie genre by introducing ferocious and fast-moving zombies — sorry, infected — while blended with visceral horror and bleak social commentary. It also launched the careers of then-relative unknowns, including Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris. Not to mention Boyle’s unconventional approach to predominantly shooting 28 Days Later in a Canon XL1 prosumer DV camera, which gives the first movie a scrappy documentary-like feel.
Fast-forward to the present, Boyle and returning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle have again eschewed the primary use of digital or film camera in favour of multiple iPhone 15 Pro Max units equipped with various attachments (more on this later). It’s nice to see Alex Garland, the original screenwriter behind 28 Days Later, return to write for the sequel. This time, the movie takes place after the first movie’s Rage virus outbreak from the medical research laboratory in Cambridge, triggering a widespread infection across Great Britain that leads to a complete societal collapse.
Nothing has changed anyway, evidently in the tense prologue, where Boyle brings a stark contrast between comfort and dread as we see young children inside a room watching a Teletubbies episode. It doesn’t take long before something bad happens with a horde of the infected massacring everyone in sight. A boy named Jimmy (Rocco Haynes) manages to escape amid the chaos and death.
The story soon focuses on Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old boy living on the heavily fortified Holy Island with his parents, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer). Jamie thinks his son is ready to take on the ultimate challenge, a rite of passage requiring him to head to the mainland for his first kill. But Spike will be accompanied by his father throughout the journey. Both equipped with bows and arrows, they soon head out of the main gate and cross over the mainland via the causeway at low tide.
The visuals are top-notch, with the use of iPhones as Mantle’s sharp cinematography captures the rugged beauty of the island and the forested mainland. Widescreen angle and eagle’s eye shots are beautifully lensed, like the scene where Spike and Jamie are walking along the low-tide causeway surrounded by the wide open sea and clear blue sky.
Once on the mainland, they have to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of danger, where their journey not only comes across the oversized, crawling infected dubbed the “Slow-Lows” but also a group of faster ones led by the more acute leader known as the “Alpha”. They have to fend off these infected by killing them with an arrow. At one point, there’s even a thrilling, yet surreal nighttime chase across the causeway later in the movie — easily the best scene in 28 Years Later.
For a while there, Boyle does a good job delivering the visceral moments of graphic violence and gore while nailing a solid father-son dynamic between Jamie and Spike. It also helps that Aaron Taylor-Johnson and particularly Alfie Williams, who steals most of the show as the boy who steps out of his comfort zone in his transition to manhood. Then comes the second half as Boyle is now focused mainly on Spike’s quest to bring his sick mother to find a doctor named Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who happens to be somewhere on the mainland.
The ensuing journey makes me feel like I’m watching an entirely different movie altogether. Sure, there are still plenty of gory moments and the attack of the infected along the way every now and then. But they are more of an afterthought as Boyle emphasises heavily on the family drama, and its subsequent mellow tone dominates the rest of the movie. I get that Boyle wants his 28 Years Later to be more than just a survival horror, but his decision to introduce something tender and poignant in a drama-heavy approach is rather misguided.
Don’t get me wrong, the acting is good, with Jodie Comer deserving equal mention, and so does Ralph Fiennes, whose eccentric doctor role is one of the movie’s highlights. And yet, the story somewhat lacks the much-needed emotional weight to justify Boyle’s change of pace. Not to forget, the movie’s nearly two-hour length feels like a tedious slog to sit through, particularly during the protracted second half.
The first two movies, including 28 Days Later and its worthy standalone sequel, 28 Weeks Later, were among the most thrilling zombie horrors ever made back in the 2000s era. Since then, the zombie horror has been bled dry with various filmmakers finding different ways to keep the genre alive. With the arrival of 28 Years Later, anticipations are naturally higher than usual to see whether the creative duo of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland can cook up something remarkably daring that will blow this movie out of the water.
Unfortunately, anyone who is expecting Garland to pour in his keen sensibilities on social commentaries will likely be disappointed by his overall tonally uneven, yet surprisingly lacklustre screenplay. 28 Years Later concludes with an open ending, which isn’t a surprise anyway, given the movie was filmed back-to-back with Nia DaCosta-directed 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is currently set for next January. But for now, things don’t look as promising as I’ve been anticipating all this while.
