28 Years Later (Spoiler FREE Film Review)

These days I’m not following movie news that much. I’m too busy relocating and figuring out what to really do with my life. I have no time for the news in general, even the news about this “World War III in patches”, let alone about movies.

It just happened by chance that someone in a WhatsApp chat asked, “Hey, does anybody want to go to watch 28 Years Later?”

I immediately thought, “Did they finally make it? Hell, yes! Let’s go!”

The Rage Virus Got Smarter

And there I was. I haven’t been to the theatre in a very long time, and I realised how dearly I needed it. After that, I even slept better than I had in ages. With a horror movie, above all. But is 28 Years Later really about horror? No, it’s not, in my humble opinion.

Though 28 Years Later can be very graphic in some scenes, horror is not its engine. Violence here is equivalent to the same gore you can appreciate in wildlife documentaries. The infected changed a lot since the first 28 days (or weeks) after Patient Zero was possessed by the Rage virus. Back then, the virus was still “stupid”. It prevented its own hosts from eating. Such a limitation led the last infected on British soil to die of starvation after 5 weeks, and with them, even the Rage virus disappeared. As COVID-19 taught us, the goal of a virus is not to kill its hosts. A virus has to spread as much as possible to guarantee its own survival. The Rage virus understood this and it didn’t waste the second chance it was given 28 weeks after the original outbreak. With time, the Rage virus allowed its hosts to eat. No more violent vomiting convulsions whenever an infected tries to ingest something (remember Mailer?). Now the infected are a new, fully functional species, that can find food, can eat it, can even reproduce, and at the end of the day, can live in harmony with nature. In one of the most striking “docu” shots rolling throughout the movie, the infected are playing with each other in a small river, enjoying themselves in the water, on a sunny day; not as grotesque zombies, but as real animals living in their natural habitat.

Danny Boyle’s Authentic Directing Style

The new infected ecosystem is a powerful plot device that lays the ground for an outstanding coming-of-age story, and gives Boyle room to create a visual experience that is reminiscent of a lengthy music video. The imagery is highly vivid, alternating breathtaking landscapes, showing England’s natural beauty, with eerie night vision shots, displaying the infected hunting deeds. You can’t even tell if they’re infected or just Homo Erectus from the Palaeolithic. It’s interesting how they attack animals only when hungry, but attack “normal” humans regardless. One reason is that the virus “tells” them to infect normal humans, in order to spread. The other motive is less obvious, but more poetic. The infected are the real normal animals obeying the brutal, but harmonic laws of nature. Humans are an invasive alien species in the current eco-system of the British islands, bloodthirsty beasts. You can see it in the difference between the violence perpetrated by the infected, all based on survival and self-protection, and the violence perpetrated by humans; sadistic, unnecessary and painful.

A Tribute to English History and a Mediation Over Brexit

But more than nature, this film is first and foremost a homage to English history and tradition. You can see many references hinting at the Roman origins of England, king Arthur, the late Sycamore Gap tree standing near the Hadrian’s wall, and above all, the tradition of archery. The rise of an independent England began when all English people mastered the art of throwing arrows.

The protagonist, Spike, is a 12-year old kid who mastered the art of archery, after intense training with the other villagers of a small island that managed to escape the outbreak, by remaining isolated from the outside world. Continental Europe moved fast towards the 21st century, just as Spike’s tiny island jumped back to the Middle Ages, retaining only the fashion sense from our days. This is clearly a metaphor to describe Brexit, with its pros and cons. It seems like Boyle admits that Europe didn’t need the UK and maybe it’s better off without it. But can the UK also be better off without Europe? It might be possible, as suggested by the encounter Spike has with a Swedish soldier, the only survivor of a European contingent that set foot on British mainland, for unknown reasons, only to be slaughtered by the evolved infected. It seems like the author wanted to say, “Why do you keep interfering with British life? Leave us alone!”

The filmmakers really mean it, given how graphic the death of the European commando looks. That passage of the script could have been written by Nigel Farage himself!

Memento Mori, Memento Amoris

But death doesn’t always have to be scary, gruesome, or painful. “Some deaths are better than others…”

The skull monument you see in the theatre poster is not what you think. The related scene will give you goosebumps, but not out of fear, rather out of touching compassion. Those skulls don’t celebrate death. They celebrate life (and even love).

Memento Mori, remember you must die. But also, Memento Amoris, remember you must love.

You will remember all of this, even if you have a bad memory. I can guarantee that 28 Years Later will stick with you forever, thanks to the incredible soundtrack of Young Fathers, Alex Garland’s masterful writing, and Danny Boyle's puzzling directing. He was so smart and brave to go back to the first “28 movie”, to create something different, highly original in its own right. He did what 99% of directors would have never done. They would have limited themselves to make “just a sequel”, falling into the trap of making an unintentional parody of their previous work. It happens so often these days. It seems as if directors and producers get hit by a midlife crisis which makes them willing to go back to high school. The result is often so pathetic, and when I heard about 28 Years Later, I was fearing Boyle and Garland were going to fall into that trap as well. I knew my fears were unfounded since the epic opening of this film.

I immediately got into each character’s skin, starting from the only infected who’s able to speak during the offset of the first symptoms. It was bone-chilling, yet so epic, to see a man happy to be assaulted by the infected. For him that’s the sign of judgment day. As an angelic soundtrack by Young Fathers mounts up, the priest’s unshakable faith makes him ecstatic during the infection, to the point that he raises from those “zombies”, and with his eyes full of bright red blood, he can still say aloud, “YES, YES, YEEESSSSS!!!! WAUURRGGG!!!!”

This moment is as absurd as it’s beautiful! As he runs out of a church, this enthusiastic infected promises that we will embark on an incredible cinematic journey. The other infected that follow him symbolise us, the audience. We want to believe him, so we follow him outside the church, in his wild rampage. That’s how I felt in real-time. When the ending credits rolled up, I could say it was the right choice. His promise was fulfilled. Thank you, Father!