It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, 28 Years Later is the third film in the franchise, picking up… duh – Twenty-eight years after the previous films. And I know, the infected in the 28 series aren’t zombies, and normally I’d agree and stick to that definition, but it’s Easter Sunday as I write this, and damn if this and Bone Temple don’t ultimately scratch that Easter itch.
Spoilers for what the next film I’m reviewing is after this one posts.
And I would be remiss to not mention the gorgeous cinematography by original cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.
We begin with a cold open taking place on the original infection day 28 years prior, where we watch a young boy named Jimmy (Rocco Haynes) experience his entire family dying, including his Vicar father (Sandy Batchelor) who sees this as Judgement Day and welcomes the bloodthirsty monsters that swarm his church in the Scottish Highlands.
Don’t worry, we’ll get back to him.
Twenty-eight years later, the Rage Virus has been eradicated from continental Europe, but the British Isles are under indefinite quarantine, and we focus on a small community living on Lindisfarne, an island whose only entrance or exit is covered by the tide each day, effectively isolating them from the mainland. It’s a community that has essentially regressed to a more pastoral existence, farming, raising stock, and existing with pretty solidly established social and moral structures.
They celebrate the male children growing up to become hunters and scavengers, and we open on the day that young Spike (Alfie Williams) is going to be taken to the mainland by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to get his first kill. It’s a big deal, especially since Spike’s mom Isla (Jodie Comer) is dying from what we eventually learn is cancer, and is in a pretty consistent delusional state.
It’s this relationship that really forms the emotional core of the film that not only narratively, but thematically, expands the scope of what the 28 franchise hopes to encompass. And it does it in a manner that effectively echoes the plot points of the original 2002 film. This is what strikes me as funny about the initial reviews of 28 Years Later who bitched and moaned about there not being enough infected action. This film follows the narrative trajectory of the first film almost to the letter, but instead of ending with our main character embracing the rage of the infected, we have a main character who learns about grief and loss without succumbing to his rage.
I think that’s an important thing to acknowledge Garland and Boyles addressing nearly twenty-five years later. They’ve grown as artists, but the fanbase hasn’t grown alongside them. If this isn’t plain enough, Spike’s entire journey moves from a child being indoctrinated into a hyper-masculine social role, discovering that his father is a liar, embellishing his tales of their time on the mainland, and then witnessing him cheat on his dying mother.
So, when he learns that there’s a doctor on the mainland, he doesn’t hesitate to sneak his mom off to the dangerous outside world, in the hope that she can be cured. He tries to do something to save her that no one in their community would even think to try. This is a film about emotional maturity overcoming the expected behavior of a backward society.
But no, let’s just get some more screeching, blood-splattered crazies attacking people for the crime of existing. That’s exciting and gets the audience’s blood going. Except there’s a lot of naked man meat on display so that throws a wrench into these dipshits’ enjoyment of the violence and gore.
No homo.
The performances here are all magnificent, especially Alfie Williams’ Spike and Jodie Comer’s Isla. In what shouldn’t have been a surprise, but was anyway, was the performance of Ralph Fiennes as Doctor Kelson. He walks a narrow tightrope of madness and sincere concern for humanity – even the infected. Painted red with iodine, which fights the infection, and living in a massive ossuary made up from the bones and skulls of hundreds, if not thousands, of the dead, he brings a much-needed compassion and humanity to the film, just as Spike really needs it.
People will look back on this film as a masterpiece that made an almost forgotten franchise relevant again in a world sorely lacking in empathy and hope. I cannot recommend 28 Years Later any higher. It’s easily the strongest film of this year’s marathon, whose position is only challenged by its sequel. And that’s only because of the last-minute tonal change in the closing moments that almost scuttled the whole affair as that original Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) returns in a spectacularly goofy way.
But more on that in a bit.