“28 Years Later”, Danny Boyle’s return to his own hyper manic world of infected zombies overtaking the British Islands, was not the movie I thought it would be. It was so much more.
After redefining not just the nomenclature of post-apocalyptic cinema but providing one of the finest examples of the genre in 2002 with “28 Days Later”, where high production value was sidelined for the immediacy of off the shelf consumer cameras, shambling ghouls were traded for sprinting blood spewing infected, and the looming specter of 9/11 placed a mirror between the film’s depiction of a world self immolated by rage and our own, Boyle’s style continued to evolve, a frantic aesthetic fueled by countercultural rage and joy perpetually snubbing its nose at the establishment, at war, at polite society, at basically everyone. Boyle was always political from his breakout opus “Trainspotting” and beyond, but with “28 Days Later”, he and screenwriter Alex Garland were able to tap into a vein of motor oil that was steadily fueling the rage-filled snowball of a world racing toward war. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? Watching “28 Days Later” is like mainlining igniter fluid, as invigorating and terrifying as any war film, with the immediacy of a story accidentally commenting on world events in real time. It’s a triumph, if a thematically unintentional one. “28 Years Later”, on the other hand, is in no form accidental in its themes or eccentricities. It is purposeful and precise in its obtuseness. It is the work of artists given free rein to take house money and to rage against machines with the perspective of time and tragedy in their wake. “28 Years Later” is spectacular, just not in the way you’d expect.
Unsurprisingly set twenty-eight years after the initial outbreak of the rage virus and the subsequent quarantining of the British Islands by the nations of the world, the small island community of Lindisfarne is able to thrive as well as possible given the circumstances, with a natural bridge that ebbs and flows with the tide offering them as effective a defense as any from the infected. Spike (Alfie Williams) is a child born in the aftermath of quarantine, a twelve-year-old boy who is being taken to the mainland for the first time by his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), against the better wishes of his terribly sick mother, Isla (Jodie Comer). Her mind is going, but there is no doctor to be found on the island. All Spike and Jamie can do is watch helplessly as Isla deteriorates before their eyes. Armed with homemade bows and arrows, father and son venture across the land bridge so Spike can be “blooded” and kill his first infected, seemingly a rite of manly passage in this brave new world. However, once among the forests and rivers that he had always dreamed of, Spike soon learns that the infected are not necessarily the mindless monsters he had been led to believe. What’s more, Spike discovers that there is a doctor on the mainland (Ralph Fiennes) whom Jamie believes to be psychotic and unable to help heal Isla’s condition. But Spike comes to find that his father is not the sole arbiter of truth and seeks to plot his own path, blind with love and the ignorant assurance of youth that things can work out if you try hard enough. So against the wishes of anyone but him, Spike secretly leads his increasingly invalid mother to the mainland, where help cannot find them and infection sprints on the swift legs of the damned, in search of a doctor to save her life. “28 Years Later” is a story of death, just not in the way you’d expect.
COVID-19 looms large over “28 Years Later” as thematically as 9/11 loomed over “28 Days Later”. And in truth, how could it not? The aftermath of a civilization devastated by an assassin that is as silent as it is deadly has left all of us with a lingering terror that we perhaps rarely acknowledge but retain all the same. There were so many dead, so many needless dead; friends, neighbors, grandparents, and teachers. We hear numbers like 700,000 deaths between March 2020 and October 2021, and cannot begin to fathom the toll; with the exception of those tasked with manning the front lines of ICUs across the country, that is, who may not have been soldiers, but certainly combatants in an unholy war. Most of us cannot imagine 700,000 anything, let alone whole human lives. How could we? Boyle and Garland attempt to offer a visualization for us of such a loss, a memento mori that is as gruesome as it is lovely and as subversive as it is devastating. One of the most striking visuals of the film features a bone forest, with piles of femurs and tibias lashed together like some petrified temple of decay beside a towering pile of human skulls. This display is the centerpiece of the film’s final act, which left me a blubbering mess. For a film ostensibly about zombies ripping flesh from bone, an extended vigil in remembrance of the thousands of needless dead was not one I expected, nor was I expecting Fiennes’ to offer a deeply contemplative and empathic performance that is as awards worthy as any he’s ever undertaken. We can remember the dead as numbers, or we can remember who they were as people, with eyes that saw and minds that dreamed. In any other film, such a borderline “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” level display of human viscera would be thrilling and playfully distasteful, not poignant and reverential. “28 Years Later” is a horror film, just not in the way you’d expect.
Taking his usual punk rock approach to filmmaking, Boyle shot “28 Years Later” almost entirely on iPhones, capturing vast landscapes of mountains and forests and oceans and star fields with the giddy energy of a student filmmaker stretching their limits. His innovation is invigorating, his joy for the craft infectious. That’s not even to mention his choice to soundtrack the film with the rollicking, bold, and deeply sounds of Scottish progressive hip hop group “Young Fathers”, whose work crests the already surging emotional intensity of the film near to its breaking point. As always in his films, it’s clear that Boyle’s first love was the world of music videos. Yet, unlike some of his peers for whom snark is a second language, Boyle always leads with his heart and his gut. While there are basic compositions in “28 Years Later” that hold more thematic intent than most films do, Boyle also can’t help himself but to intersperse other media throughout in intentional thematic contrast; from flashes of old movies where Arthurian knights man the battlements against barbarian hordes to a haunting recitation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Boots”. Boyle and Garland clearly sense a menace in the reformation of a world left in the aftermath of mass death, the potential for untold horrors as the mechanization of humanity rebuilds itself from the brink of eradication. Boyle never states these concepts, nor does he need to. He is a stylist, a thematic maximalist, and his films are as unique to him as any filmmaker of his caliber could be. “28 Years Later” is a beautiful film, just not in the way you’d expect.
Death seems to be the beat to which the best films of this year of dancing; including “The Monkey”, “Bring Her Back”,“The Life of Chuck”, and even “Sinners”. “28 Years Later” is spinning that rhythm to its own purpose. There are zombie terrors and blood-belching delights to be had, don’t get me wrong, but that is not the true horror at the core of this world or our own. Boyle and Garland have always known that and are beating a drum whose echo stretches back twenty-five years and a hundred more, reminding us that it is a gift to remember the dead together, if only in the knowledge that one day we are destined to join them.
“28 Years Later” is one of the best films of the year, just not in the way you’d expect.
Memento Mori.
You’ll be glad you did.
“28 Years Later” is playing at The Broad Theater and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
