Review: 28 Years Later

Everyone remembers the superfast zombies (well, technically not zombies, but...) from 28 Days Later. Largely forgotten is everything else. Director Danny Boyle and scriptwriter Alex Garland used the broad outlines of the zombie movie - and a bunch of other British horror: the memorable opening owes a lot to The Day of the Triffids, for one - to lure audiences in to something that was at times fairly experimental. And so it is again.

It's been 28 years since the rage virus was unleashed on the UK (turns out the European spread seen in sequel 28 Months Later was short-lived). The few uninfected survivors live in isolated settlements, such as the island Lindisfarne, where 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams) has two worries on his mind: his mother Isla (Jodie Corner) is ill, swinging between coherency and delirium, and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is about to take him to the mainland for his first kill.

Connected to the mainland by a causeway that can only be crossed in low tide, the island community needs to scavenge to survive - and the only way to survive a scavenging mission is to be ready to kill any infected that come along. After a generation, some infected are now bloated crawling things, while others remain the usual screeching running horrors. 

And then there are the Alpha's, giant killing machines that are almost impossible to stop. Suffice to say running into one of them can turn a straightforward hunting trip into a nightmare, and even they're not the worst things on the mainland. When Jamie and Spike see a fire off in the distance, Jamie tells Spike about a doctor he once knew who went mad and became obsessed with the dead. But all Spike hears is "doctor" - the only person left who could possibly save his mother.

Boyle can still generate the usual terrors when he has to. There's plenty of sneaky zombies, unstoppable zombie hordes, people backed into a corner by zombies, and people having their heads torn off and spines ripped out by Alphas, who are extremely scary and clearly big fans of Predator. 

But there's also a fair amount of experimentation going on, starting with much of the events being filmed on iPhones to continue the digital feel that made the first film stand out (and look extremely dated today). Deaths often occur in freeze-frame, there's night vision footage of glowing-eyed zombies, and the journey to the mainland is sound-tracked by a century-old recording of a Rudyard Kipling poem about marching to war.

Spike's story is more about coming-of-age than merely of survival, as he eventually strikes out from his village - probably a good idea, as the whole place feels a little cult-y in an inbred UK way - in search of the fabled doctor (Ralph Fiennes). After a fair amount of slaughter in the first two acts, the third turns into something closer to a meditation on death and its meaning - before a final twist that sets up a sequel due early next year.

The first film ran counter to the established zombie tradition; two decades later, that tradition is as strong as ever, and this film is even less interested in its cliches. There's plenty of scares here; there's also plenty to think about. It's the most exciting film Boyle has made in years; seems it took the living dead to bring him back to life.

- Anthony Morris