Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players.
28 Days Later is not just one of my favorite horror movies; it’s one of my favorite movies. I was wildly disappointed in the sequel, 28 Weeks Later. The first 10-15 minutes are brutal and fantastic, and then it becomes a series of plot holes. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have returned to the series, though, and have inexplicably skipped having 28 Months Later, going instead for years. I was guardedly optimistic going into this one. I adore the first movie, but I’ve been burned by a sequel before.
The lore is something that definitely needs to be addressed here. The second movie ends with what seems to be the Rage virus being released on the European mainland, a fact that would quickly lead to the virus spreading across all of Europe, into the Middle East and Asia, and potentially into Africa as well. We get a snippet at the start of the virus spreading in the Scottish highlands, with a young boy named Jimmy Crystal (Rocco Haynes initially) escaping, and also watching his minister father willingly give himself over to the infected in what he believes to be something like the Rapture.
We’re told, though, that the virus was defeated on the European continent, and with the failed attempt to reboot the U.K. half a year after the initial plague, England, Scotland, and Wales have been quarantined, with regular patrols preventing anyone who has reached the island from ever leaving it. There is a community on the island of Lindisfarne off the northern coast, which is a part of the quarantine. The people who live there have access to the main island via a causeway that appears during low tide and is inaccessible otherwise.
We are going to meet Spike (Alfie Williams), who has just turned 12 and is ready for his coming-of-age ceremony. This means heading to the English mainland with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who is a scavenger, bringing back anything useful he can find from the mainland. Jamie’s wife/Spike’s mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is severely ill with something that appears to be like dementia. The pair has an eventful trek to the mainland, and when they return, Spike is thrown a party for his successful venture to the mainland.
It’s at the party that he discovers his father has a mistress in the island’s schoolteacher. Convinced that Jamie wants Isla to die, Spike takes his mother from their house, starts a fire to distract the guards, and heads to the mainland where he has heard that there is a doctor named Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) who he hopes will be able to cure his mother.
There are some real changes to the film world from where it started a couple of decades ago. When the original 28 Days Later was created, the infected became essentially mindless killing machines intent on attacking anything they came across. In this world, the infected have evolved in some ways to create subspecies of their type. While the original variant appears to still exist, there are others who appear much more animalistic in that they seek out food and water, and apparently can breed. Slow-lows are obese, typically crawl slowly (hence the name) and survive on worms. And then there are the Alphas, who are larger and stronger, essentially reacting to the virus like a dose of steroids.
There were evidently a number of people who were disappointed with 28 Years Later, and I don’t really know why that’s the case. The changes to the mythology might be a part of this, but that was a necessary change. In the original film, when we’ve gone another 28 days, we see the infected dying of dehydration and lack of food. If the plague is going to continue to exist, we need to have some way for them to stay alive. Critics have liked the film more than audiences, and that does make sense to me. There are plenty of scenes of brutality, including people having their heads and spines ripped out like Mortal Kombat characters, but there’s far less blood and gore than in the first film.
It's worth noting that Alfie Williams, who won't get any sort of aware show buzz, is the heart and soul of this. The rest of the cset is good, and Jodie Comer, as always, is worth every second of screentime, but if we don't buy Spike, the entire movie falls apart, and the kid has the goods. If I have a disappointment here, it’s that the film ends on a cliffhanger. It’s all designed to set up 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a film that has had much more success with audiences. Far be it from me to want less of this cinematic universe, but I do feel like the movie I’m watching should tell a full story. All of the Star Wars original movies and the LotR films got to ends that made sense. 28 Years Later doesn’t, and that’s a problem.
Still, I liked this a great deal. It doesn’t eclipse the first film, but honestly, how many films do?
Why to watch 28 Years Later: It’s a return to form for the created world.
Why not to watch: It doesn’t tell a full story.
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