28 Years Later

More of the same from director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, which will delight fans of the first two 28 ___ Later movies. I, unfortunately, never clicked with this zombie-apocalypse horror series, shot and edited via low-fi consumer-grade technology to make it look more "real." This entry is, naturally, set twenty-eight years after a contagious disease inducing homicidal rage was released in the UK, causing widespread societal collapse. The Rage Virus has now devastated continental Europe, and Great Britain is heavily quarantined. The abandoned survivors are forced to find ways to endure amongst the infected. The story centers on a twelve-year-old boy named Spike, who grew up in a rural community living on a tidal island off the Scottish Highlands, connected to the mainland by a causeway that is only crossable at low tide. This submergable stone road and the fortified gates that protect the bucolic village are the movie's best aspects. After a tedious pre-credit sequence, we meet Spike as he is about to embark on a coming-of-age rite of passage. He and his father journey from the safety of their island to hunt the infected.

The film benefits from a solid cast headed up by twelve-year-old Alfie Williams as Spike, with supporting turns by Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Da, Jodie Comer as the Ma, and a terrific Ralph Fiennes as a possibly insane doctor who Spike hopes can cure his mother from an unknown malady that is slowly eroding her memory, personality, and life. Still, neither these performances nor the absurd music and sound design can disguise the fact that nothing in this movie makes a damn bit of sense.

The character behaviors and motivations are ludicrous—the devoted dad doesn't pursue his son and wife when they sneak away from the island, even though he knows exactly where they're going, presumably because if he went after them, it would prevent the movie from actually starting after an hour of exposition. The established mythology and world-building of the post-apocalyptic premise seem to be the most important aspects of the picture yet they get ignored whenever there's an opportunity to toss in a pretentious sequence—the mom should by all rights get infected after this movie's key set peice, but she doesn't because the bond of motherhood trumps the uncurable Rage Virus or some such nonsence. The allegories to contemporary events are as overtly foregrounded yet bafflingly unclear as the subtext in most every Alex Garland screenplay—or perhaps this film is an incredibly astute commentary on why Brexit was bad but Scottish independence would be good, which went over my head.

28 Years Later is about as ideal a title as you could ask for in a three-decades-later legacyquel, but this movie is more concerned with setting up future installments than providing a satisfying update or conclusion to the prior pictures. From its first scene, it is clear that this movie is designed to excite the type of audience who would love to see a TV series or several more features in the 28 Days Later cinematic universe. I personally, only get excited about future entries of a film series (or a fucking franchize) if the movie I'm watching feels like a complete story that succeeds on its own merrits.