Review: 28 Years Later – Memento mori
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes
7/10
It’s refreshing to see a reboot that not only fans were asking for but also has lived up to the expectations (well, to a degree). With only two films in the franchise, the 28 Days Later series is nonetheless highly regarded for what it brought to the zombie genre. The way it showed truly horrifying creatures and the split-second decision you have to make when your buddy gets infected made it feel even more relentless than zombie films before and since. And with the release of 28 Years Later, the series only strengthens its place in this horror subgenre, with this third instalment bringing the terror and thrills from beginning to (the frustrating) end.
The opening scene gives us a brief glimpse of Day One of the infection before it cuts to 28 years later, where quarantined folks reside on a small island not far from Britain’s mainland. When the tide is low, a pathway is revealed connecting the two lands, so Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes his son Spike (Alfie Williams) over there to hone his hunting skills using zombies as prey.
But Spike has issues with the man his dad is, seeing both him and his grandfather as deceitful about how this infected part of the world works. He would rather drag his ailing mum (Jodie Comer) out of bed and take her across to the mainland to visit an isolated doctor (Ralph Fiennes) to diagnose her mystery illness.
It’s great to see not only these zombies back again but also Danny Boyle’s tremendous skills behind the camera, using such startling and unusual (yet effective) imagery and music choices that really prove there’s an eclectic auteur behind the camera of this blockbuster horror film, not an algorithmic committee. Some of these stylistic choices don’t work (the bullet-time moments look very silly in this otherwise serious film), but most of them add a visual beauty that sticks out even more amidst the apocalyptic scenario (especially when such intense escape scenes occur in front of the wondrous northern lights).
As intense as these scenes are, the downtime scenes in between really add to this cruel new way of survival. An army lad (Edvin Ryding) brings some levity to the film, talking to Spike about the old world, and Spike’s reactions to it are hilarious and priceless. But soon after, when the Doctor character makes his appearance, the film then hones in on the Latin saying that he keeps quoting—memento mori, “remember you must die.” Unusually for a zombie film, many of the characters in this film reflect deeply on death, whether by these zombies or other causes, and this all builds up to an extraordinary sequence, one of immense emotional quality that couldn’t have been achieved so deeply without Boyle’s incredible cinematic prowess.
Unfortunately, the film itself is infected with a horrendous new trend in cinema—it doesn’t truly conclude. Just like the new Dune, Fast and Furious, and Mission: Impossible movies, this film ends on a cliffhanger, with the rest of the story to be concluded in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, to be released next January (this time directed by Nia DaCosta). As always, it’s jarring to be ending the film at the halfway point, especially when you introduce a captivating group of characters in the very last scene, and for this, the film loses a whole point in its rating.
Despite the misgiving with its “conclusion,” 28 Years Later is otherwise a superb sequel after nearly two decades since the last one (even though fans were asking for a ‘28 Months Later’ instead). Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have whipped up a terrific sequel all these years later and have shown us how to truly deliver a scary yet powerful zombie film.
DAVID MORGAN-BROWN