Danny Boyle, “28 Years Later” (2025)
A much-anticipated entry in the series of films that began 20 years ago with “28 Days Later”, this film of post-apocalyptic horror turns out a damp squib with an improbable plot in which various characters make decisions that leave you wondering whether the humans are more mindless than the fearsome zombies (or the “infected” rather) that made the original film a horror classic and revitalised the zombie film genre. Back in the early 2000s, when the initial Rage virus broke out across Britain, a young boy, Jimmy, witnesses his community and his vicar father being slaughtered by a mob of infected humans. The last thing the vicar can do for his son is to give him his crucifix necklace and tell the child to run for his life. Jimmy does so and flees, and his escape ends the film’s opening sequence.
Nearly 30 years after Jimmy’s disappearance, in an island community just off the coast of Scotland, hunter Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) decides his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) is old enough to kill his first infected victim as part of a rite-of-passage ritual. Spike receives appropriate warnings of the risks involved in this ritual and he and his dad set off along the causeway connecting their island to mainland Scotland. There, they go through some hair-raising adventures, not all of them involving encounters with the infected, but Spike does manage to kill an infected creature and the two return home in the nick of time before an infected chasing them can savage them. The island community holds a celebration for Spike but Spike, after witnessing his father making out with the schoolteacher, goes home and chats with his grandfather, telling him among other things of a fire he and Jamie saw on the mainland. Grandpa says this fire must have been lit by a Dr Kelson, a reclusive doctor. Disillusioned with his father’s behaviour, Spike determines to take his ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer) to the mainland and search for Dr Kelson in the hope that the doctor can find out what is making his mother sick.
Predictably, once Spike and Isla reach the mainland, they encounter more infected humans and meet up with a Swedish soldier, Erik (Edvin Ryding), the sole survivor of his patrol group who saves the boy and his mother from the infected. On their way to Dr Kelson, the trio come across an infected woman giving birth and Isla picks up the newborn baby, who is free from infection. The trio are ambushed by an infected man who kills Erik, and chases Spike and Isla – until Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) suddenly appears and stops the infected man with a morphine-laced blow dart!
Despite the improbable plot – who in their right mind would allow a 12-year-old boy to go hunting ferocious zombies as part of rite-of-passage ritual with just his dad to protect him? – the film appears fairly credible in its first half, as Jamie and Spike try to spend their first night together on the mainland without any major mishaps. Their island community appears quite idyllic, even eco-utopian, though background visual details and the use of old patriotic B&W British propaganda film shorts suggest this community in its own way resembles a religious cult. Once Spike decides to take Isla to the mainland, the film becomes more melodramatic, with a focus on Spike having to grow up quickly and take charge of Isla and the baby – how the bub survives with no milk is never explained – culminating in their taking refuge in a sanctuary built by Dr Kelson entirely of human bones, the centrepiece of which is a tower of skulls. A message about death leading to rebirth is made, in a banal way. Subplots and characters that do not advance the plot or help in others’ character development come and go – alas poor Erik! we did not know him as a fellow of much jest – and the cliche that whenever a pregnant woman appears in a film, she ends up giving birth later, gets another workout. With the plot wearing very thin, the film retreats into a series of sketches, the last of which is a bizarre Power Rangers kung-fu comedy skit that reintroduces Jimmy from the opening sequence, now grown up and in charge of a bizarre religious cult.
Probably the only thing viewers will take away from this film is that Spike appears extraordinarily blessed given his close scrapes with the infected and the people who rescue him in the nick of time. Whether this good luck can last him in the sequel “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” – didn’t we already see that? – long enough for him to mature psychologically and physically and not suffer too much trauma from having to kill zombies is yet to be seen but I doubt not many people are prepared to wait for the sequel to find out after seeing this mess.
The pity is that the zombies who should be the stars of this film are little more than wild animals to be hunted down and killed like vermin, rather than pitied and helped to regain their humanity. Perhaps this is supposed to say something rather uncomplimentary about the humans who pursue and hunt them but the idiocies and inconsistencies in the plot do not encourage viewers to come to this understanding.