There's something hallucinatory about '28 Years Later', as if looking through a glass darkly at a future that very well might exist - Britain, shut off from the world, quarantined, isolated, and very much post Brexit, post pandemic.

I'm still not sure what to make of it - parts of it seemed disjointed and hard to focus on, although that is the punk style of Garland and Boyle who brought 28 Days Later to not only the zombie canon, but added something new to it - fast zombies that were less flesh eaters but rage fuelled people bent on tearing everything apart. As a zombie film afficiando, I believe 28 Days is one of the best - the scene with a dazed Jim (Cillian Murphy) on London Bridge gazing upon an apocalyptic city is one of the most iconic of the genre.

Filmed mostly on iphone, though with some lush drone shots of northern England to add to the lushness of a landscape that may be decimated by the virus but repopulated by deer and trees, I found the blurry, vignette style of some scenes a little disconcerting. But that's surely the intent - unconventional, non linear arthouse storytelling here adds to the sense we're within the chaos and madness. I think the LA Times review described it well:

“28 Years Later,” the first entry of a promised trilogy, has a dull central plot beefed up by unusual ambition, quirky side characters and maniacal editing. It’s a kooky spectacle, a movie that aggressively cuts from moments of philosophy to violence, from pathos to comedy. Tonally, it’s an ungainly creature. From scene to scene, it lurches like the brain doesn’t know what the body is doing. Garland and Boyle don’t want the audience to know either, at least not yet.

A few hours on from watching the film at the cinema, however, and I'm more prepared to see the films beauty within the chaos and perhaps the sense within this ungainliness. It's like the fear and madness softens a little so you can appreciate the broader messages. Despite any failings or weaknesses, ulimately, there's poignancy here - it's not like other zombie films where humans behave selfishlessly and with their own survival in mind. Yes, death is a threat - particularly with the 'Alpha' virus infected who seem to have mutated - but ultimately there's a broader message about compassion and hope in the face of horror.

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Although the story's main protagonist is a young boy, Spike, and may be seen as a coming of age (he has to learn to kill to survive, to be the hero his father tells everyone he is, to accept death as part of life), his mother Isla, played by Jody Comer, for me was more the focal point for understanding the film's central messages. She reflects the idea that despite the madness and horror and fear around us, we must choose empathy and compassion, which lends a kind of hope for our future. Despite the real threat to her life , she helps an infected woman give birth to a baby, who herself is uninfected. She protects her son, even though she is in late stages of brain cancer which distorts her sense of time and reality. She helps him understand her own death as part of a human experience. It's this tenderness that perhaps is missing from other zombie films and is what threw me a little.

In another beautiful scene, Isla sees the Angel of the North and imagines her father with her as she looks upon it, and simultaneously she is a young girl, remembering her father in the past telling her that the angel will still stand well into the future. What time are we in now, she wonders, perhaps thousands of years into the future? The imposing, weathered presence in a wild, overgrown setting evokes a sense of lost civilization and collective memory of the collapse of a society long after the Rage outbreak. How will Britain evolve after it's devolution? How will the rage infected humans? It's a scene of grief and loss but also about how time and history roll on without us.

Ralph Fiennes, who I also have a soft spot for, also stands for compassion. He collects the bones of the dead - both infected and uninfected - and makes a memorial of their bones, a tender act that is less mad than those who have seen him believe. It's not madness, the film suggests, to treat all beings with respect and love.

There's also some delightfully comic scenes, such as when Eric the Viking (you'll understand if you have watched it) shows Spike his girlfriend back in Sweden. Spike notes the girl's puffy lips and asks 'what's wrong with her'. The world outside Britain is just like ours, focussed on things that don't matter as much as every day survival.

I also loved the idea of the community on Holy Island, cut off at high tide by a causeway (also seen in a recent British folk horror with Jude Law, though Holy Island is Linisfarne in Northumberland and in The Third Day, the island is somewhere in Essex) which quarantines them away from the virus. This is what's always intrigued me about zombie films - how do we survive, feed ourselves, create community even if everything about society has collapsed? Perhaps get really drunk and sing Tom Jones under the eye of Queen Elizabeth.

There's a lot more I could say about this film and even writing this makes me like it more than I did when I left the cinema. I do feel that this film begs to be seen with it's sequel, the upcoming '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' directed by Nia De Costa. I think it'll make far more sense then, especially with a second viewing just before the sequel comes out next January.

Are you a fan of zombie films? What did you think of 28 Years Later, if you've watched it?