28 Years Later Review — A Beautiful Mess

What happens when an influential franchise returns to a saturated landscape?

A lot has happened since the original release of 28 Days Later.

Danny Boyle's groundbreaking 2002 film, although technically not a zombie film (pop-culture zombies had, up to that point, been known largely as slow-moving, shambling undead), ended up essentially creating the running zombie subgenre of horror films, with its hordes of fast-moving, living humans infected by a rage-inducing virus.

In its wake, films such as Dawn of the Dead (2004), Zombieland (2009), World War Z (2013) and Train to Busan (2016), not to mention video games like the Left 4 Dead, Dying Light, and The Last of Us series have sprung up.

28 Days Later itself, however, received only one sequel in 2007, 28 Weeks Later — and nothing else. A planned sequel called 28 Months Later never materialised.

So, with so many imitators (many of them great stories in their own right) over the decades, how would a sequel to the OG running zombie movie hold up?

The film follows Spike, a young boy born into a world of bloodshed and survival

Along with his parents Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer), they live on a tiny island separated from the British mainland by a single road that is hidden by the high tide.

Jamie wants to train Spike to be a capable survivalist, taking him to the mainland to train him in matters such as scavenging for supplies and killing Infected — but when Spike realises his mother is dying, he risks everything by bringing her to find Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a pre-outbreak doctor said to have become a dangerous madman who is greatly feared by Jamie.

This, on its own, is already a compelling plot with plenty to explore, but the film doesn't quite do it justice — we'll get to that later.

In many respects, this is a coming-of-age tale that chooses an emotional approach similar to The Last of Us, and at many points, it does hit those emotional beats well — Alfie Williams' performance as Spike (who is the main protagonist, full stop) is certainly excellent, and so are Jodie Comer's and Ralph Fiennes'.

The first act of the film is stellar

Building on the atmosphere set by the first trailer, the first half hour is drenched in both beauty and atmosphere — and an ominous sense of dread.

The film takes its time before reuniting us with the Infected, drawing focus on worldbuilding, and setting up our principal characters.

From here, the bones of the plot are then laid out — as well the introduction of mutated infected, notably the Alphas who have a rather spectacular means of killing their prey (think Predator-style), and "Slow-Lows" — slow, bloated zombies who are reduced to crawling on the ground, and are introduced in an especially repulsive scene.

A standout chase scene occurs at the end of this first act, taking place against a backdrop of the Northern Lights. The combination of environmental beauty with the escalating tension of the chase really exemplifies the potential that this movie could have achieved.

From a technical standpoint, the film takes an interesting approach

As a tribute to the production of 28 Days Later (which was filmed on a Canon XL-1 consumer digital camera), Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle decided to shoot 28 Years Later on a modified iPhone 15 Pro Max with a custom lens, as noted by Wired.

This is certainly noticeable at many points in the movie, as while the film looks gorgeous, the quality can get stretched or blurry at points, not to mention the shaky quality of the action scenes — which do harken back to the style of the previous films.

For certain shots, several iPhones (20 in all, according to the Motion Picture Association) would be used in a custom rig to capture something like an improvised "bullet-time" effect.

This is certainly cool the first time it happens, but unfortunately, the special effect quickly becomes tiring and repetitive, especially when it is used for scenes that should be emotional rather than cool (such as one early on where Spike is trained to shoot a restrained zombie).

Narratively, this film is ambitious in its scope — but unfortunately, it lacks focus and depth

There are times when it feels like this film was created by mashing up multiple script drafts of the same movie into one, and the result is a lack of focus on what kind of story it actually wants to tell.

Characters stumble upon plot beats (such as a stranded Swedish soldier, or a certain screaming Infected in a train) that serve no real purpose and are, in some cases, quickly forgotten soon after their introduction.

In the case of the zombie in the train, critical plot ramifications are raised from that scene — but the film seemingly lacks an interest in pursuing it, and the overall film would have been unchanged if it were cut, which is a common element throughout this film.

The finale, while emotional, feels unearned with how quickly it gets resolved — and all of this leads to a film that, overall, is an aesthetically gorgeous but disjointed mess

It speaks a lot about the film's flaws that, personally, I feel a lot of it boils down to an enormous amount of fat surrounding what could have been a very strong story focused purely on Spike and his family.

But anyway, it's still fascinating to see how Danny Boyle approaches returning to the world he helped create, a film that kickstarted an entire subgenre. And maybe that's the joy of it. I eagerly await the next instalment, shot back-to-back with this one: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

28 Years Later is currently showing in Malaysian cinemas.