28 Years Later
On Holy Island, those who take the causeway to the mainland and fail to return will never be searched for. As a right of passage, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes his teenaged son Spike (Alfie Williams) across to toughen him up by killing a rage-virus infected, but the father and son bond is broken upon their return when Spike catches his father cheating on his bedridden mother Isla (Jodie Comer) and the young man becomes determined to find her a cure in "28 Years Later."
Laura's Review: A-
Director Danny Boyle turns up the intensity up to 11 on his and writer Alex Garland's rage virus zombie franchise with a third entry that is gorier and more emotionally devastating than the first two. Reportedly the first of a new trilogy, which may be the first time a third film becomes a first of three, this brutal outing deals intimately with family while also dipping its toe into the political ramifications of a country's isolation, the UK having been quarantined from the rest of the world to contain the virus.
A prologue set in the Scottish Highlands introduces us to Jimmy whose mother yells for him to run as she's taken down by infected and whose father, the local cleric, welcomes them into his Church in a deranged kind of rapture, leaving the terrified child to run off alone. Twenty-eight years later, twelve-year old Spike lives something resembling a normal life in a house which shows wear but where dad cooks breakfast every morning and school is held in an old-timey one room classroom. But Isla suffers terrible headaches, fevers and states of confusion and as the island has no doctor, she has no diagnosis. Her beloved father, Sam (Christopher Fulford), comes to care for her while Spike heads out with dad for his rite of passage into manhood.
After a celebratory village sendoff promising a boisterous welcome home party, Spike experiences the vast expanse of the mainland for the first time, its beauty emphasized by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle's 2.76:1 widescreen aspect ratio. His dad assures him that if they walk long enough, he will no longer be able to see the ocean, but after Spike achieves his first kill by shooting a Slow-Low, a bloated, slug-like mutation that crawls along the ground, with his bow and arrow, what they encounter afterwards will find them running for home, a return delayed by having to hole up in a loft to avoid a horde of infected, including an Alpha, a new mutation Jamie says takes a dozen arrows to kill. They depart in the pre-dawn light, and while the causeway has not yet been uncovered by low tide, it is navigable. But halfway across, Spike sees the Alpha is following them, he is fast, and they barely make it, aided by guard tower archers.
Disappointed in his dad's drunken exaggeration of his prowess and back alley fumbling with Rosie, Spike leaves his party to check on his mom. Sam has good things to report, but when Spike mentions having seen a fire on the mainland and the direction from which it came, Same is sure it is his old GP, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). Further infuriated with his dad, who insists Kelson went insane, Jamie gets Isla up the next morning, takes her to the mainland and heads towards Kelson.
This perilous journey will give us glimpses into the foreign forces which monitor the island nation from the sea as well as expose Spike to more infected, Isla taking risks he both sees and does not, the former involving a mutation that makes little biological sense but which may be explained in a follow-up. Kelson, whose reaction to the rage virus may be unorthodox but hardly insane, has been honoring the dead on both sides with a monument built of bones. 'Memento Mori,' he tells Spike, and then 'Memento Amare.'
The film looks spectacular in all aspects, Dod Mantle giving us glimpses of what Spike has not seen using red filtered thermal vision as well as Slow-Low POV from the undulating rotting flesh on the back of the creatures. Editing gives us flashes of extreme gore, blood frequently splattering the lens. Production designer Gareth Pugh has invested Kelson's bone monuments with an eerie beauty. Boyle's talent for needle drops is once again on display, most chillingly in a 1915 recorded recitation of the Rudyard Kipling poem "Boots."
The cast is exceptional, newcomer Williams holding his own as a boy whose devotion to his mother is stronger than his fears, Taylor-Johnson a flawed but decent man struggling to maintain family. Fiennes paints Kelson's compassion with an otherworldly spirituality. Most impressive is Comer, painting a picture of both the Isla who once was and the disease which has overtaken her. The film also features Edvin Ryding as Swedish soldier Erik Sundqvist, bitter about his circumstances while providing Spike some insight into what life outside is like, and MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry as the ferocious Alpha Kelson has named Samson. There is one more British star featured in the film's last minutes in an echo of an earlier role of his this year - to say more would be a spoiler but he is sure to appear in future installments.
Just when one thinks the zombie genre has been milked dry (we're looking at you, 'Walking Dead'), along comes Danny Boyle with his most dynamic and exciting film in years. "28 Years Later" leaves you breathless.
Sony Pictures releases "28 Years Later" in theaters on 6/20/25.
