28 Years Later (Sony Pictures, R)

A return to the Rage infected British countryside. How have things changed since we first visited this vicious hellscape?

There are a lot of things I wanted out of a sequel to 28 Days Later. Interestingly enough, as a gamer, I hold 28 Days Later above Resident Evil as the best movie adaptation of the popular game franchise. Of course, despite the fact 28 Days Later has nothing to do with RE. Still, the first film is tense, violent, and culminates in a standoff at a mansion, giving it a firm leg up on the first Milla Jovovich movie. But how do you follow a movie up after 23 years? Well first you have to mostly disregard 28 Weeks Later. The film wasn’t helmed or written by Danny Boyle and as such, lacked the gravity the first film poured in excess. It does some cool things, sure, but I don't think injecting the American Army into a film universe so deeply British did the story or the fabric of the universe the first film created any real justice. What’s more, creator and returning director Boyle has all but promised a new trilogy, reuniting with long time collaborator and the first film’s writer Alex Garland. So…sequel with trilogy potential, huge time jump, where do we go? An isolated Island community accessible only during low tide. Hell yeah.

Part of this film's marketing included the audio of a poem written by Rudyard Kipling called Boots. The poem is terrifying when read, but the reading done by Taylor Homes in 1915 is bone chilling. This audio was both used in the first trailer for this film and in the first act. The cadence and repetition of Kipling’s words drive at the monotony of the world when sewn into this film’s fabric. It is beautifully shot, truly, throughout. But the interjections of deeply disturbing and violent imagery works as a wash and rinse cycle. You are washed in beauty and rinsed in blood. Always rinsed in blood.

This film’s plot is unexpected. Originally a mission beyond their isolated community Alfie William’s plays Pike, a twelve-year old boy who is going on his first excursion with his father Jamie, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Before their trip we are introduced to Pike’s mother Isla (Jodie Comer), a deeply and mysteriously ill woman, restricted to her bed on account of her sickness being in bit of a swing. What’s immediately apparent is Jamie’s distance and callousness, a disposition you understand given the state of the world. He ventures beyond the wall looking for death, for something to make him feel something almost. But as his foil, Pike is very obviously not looking for death. The boy is worried about his mother, and early on is clearly desperate to find a way to help her. The dichotomy between the father’s hunt for death and Pike’s search for life, for solutions, establishes the dialogue for the rest of the movie. Their excursion goes awry when an Alpha shows up. 28 years later, the Rage Virus has evolved.

I have always been deeply interested in the villains and monsters we create as a society. Megalomaniacs intent on destroying the world as a reflection of soviet era nuclear war fears. The agent of chaos seeking to destabilize as a reflection of global terrorism. Vampires leeching life from the youth as a reflection of Old Money and its ability to drain wealth from the ,idle and lower classes. Zombies and their shambling hunger, reflecting our sleepwalking, social media addled masses. Danny Boyle’s zombie flicks are an extension of this last form. A translation even. The Rage Virus doesn’t create shambling, slow, mumbling zombies. Instead, we get fast, ravenous, furious, loud zombies. The metaphor is in the action. This is a narrative about anger and rage and its infectiousness. A single drop of Rage infected blood transforms its victim into a spitting, violent monster. Boyle’s plague is a reflection of hostility and its ability to catch on like wildfire. When Isla has fits we see anger bubble up in her. It’s not the virus, and yet, Boyle films these scenes with the same cuts and lens exposure he uses to capture the infected. He’s drawing the line, connecting the dots. The Rage Virus isn’t some new state of humanity. Instead it is present beneath the surface in everyone when we let rage take over. The virus is simply a magnifying glass.

I love this slight but encompassing adjustment to the narrative of “Zombies” as a genre. There is a visceral and frightening nature to the Rage infected. Shamblers rarely get my blood pumping. The infected in this series of films are an onslaught, inexorably sweeping the British Isles, leading to their complete isolation from the rest of the world. Perhaps what makes these movies even more real, in metaphor, in a post COVID world, is the viewer’s familiarity with isolation and its impacts. It seems the rest of the world is managing to carry on just fine. The virus was never allowed to escape the UK. The former empire is restricted to its islands, forever cut off from the rest of humanity, forced to deal with the Rage of its own people. Truly the metaphors abound.

The most notable takeaway I have for 28 Years Later comes in the third act. A figure is discovered, veiled in myth and mystery by the folks on the isolated island, both deliberately and due to ignorance. When this figure is met by Pike the mystification is washed away with a deeply profound and emotional treatise on the importance of understanding death and its role in our lives. For a substantial moment, 28 Years Later is more than content to sit us down and make us ponder the meaning of death, its many forms, our proximity to it, how we manage it, and our power to take the manner of our death into our hands. Using Ralph Fiennes as the vessel for this introspective message is inspired. The man is mesmerizing in nearly every role he takes, and here he is nothing less.

In the end, I walked out of the theater with less of an adrenaline high and more of a deep calm. Something I found myself wholly unprepared for. I hope we get to see Danny and Alex explore these dynamics more in the following films. This one certainly ends with pages unread, more story to tell. Also there’s a certain someone named as an executive producer who didn’t make an appearance in the film proper. I need to know where he is in this dangerous and highly evolved universe. Please.