28 Years Later Review

Leave it to acclaimed director Danny Boyle for infusing a zombie film with such haunting imagery, almost as an apology for a story that maddeningly makes so little sense; it is a technical triumph and a narrative failure. Though a visual feast and rarely boring, the entire production thought they were making something that wasn't about undead corpses that brutally eat people.

The film takes place twenty eight years after the initial spread of the franchise's "Rage Virus," though in actuality and frustratingly coming out twenty three years later. Unless this is set a few years in the future, in which case I'd expect those "flying cars" we always hear about in films set in the future to solve a lot of the movie's problems, but I digress.

Anyway, the virus' outbreak of zombies is somehow isolated to exclusively the British Isles, which is quarantined off from the rest of the world, which goes on as if people aren't literally dying to zombies everyday. A blurb of onscreen text early on tells us that everyone on the islands are left to fend for themselves, a point I simply refuse to believe, unless every other place on earth is working desperately on a cure. Or they'd figure out how to bomb the land, or maybe even some rogue dictator would try to extract the virus for world domination- something! But not in "28 Years Later;" the best writer Alex Garland could come up with is every nation literally going "nah, we does do give ups."

Oh yes, the plot: on the infected island is a smaller island, reachable only by a small strip of land and only when the tide is low. Here, a merry band of survivors live in relative harmony, either fishing, scavenging, teaching, or learning how to hunt those nasty flesh eaters. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the latter, living with his twelve year old boy Spike (Alfie Williams) and his sick wife Isla (Jodie Comer). What's her ailment? She isn't "infected" but no one in the small island community knows what she has, since there's no one alive with medical training. This is unbelievably the same community, one that struggles to survive against a mysterious virus, being somehow totally cool to house someone with a different, but still mysterious, illness.

Jamie believes Spike is ready to go out on the mainland to learn how to kill for real, despite interjections from Isla, who is seemingly bedridden with a fever, convulsions, violent and loud outbursts and delusions. She thinks of the boy as just a baby, but clearly she hasn't been through enough, so Jamie heads out with her son on a potentially deadly training exercise. Spike makes his first kill, a crawling, obese zombie eating worms. How he's so large makes me wonder about the metabolism of the creatures, since he clearly can't move all that much so meals can't be easy; how'd he get so fat?! But uh-oh, there's another corpulent corpse lumbering behind, but the duo make quick work of such a slow target. But gasp, is that their ghoulish child behind that brush? They don't kill it, but does that mean these, things, have sex? Or do they rape the living? Oh if only the screenplay were that interesting.

However, they soon need to combat an entirely different breed of mutant, an alpha they say, able to apparently command small groups of non-alphas about the land. They're freakishly strong, a simple bow-and-arrow hardly making a dent in their repulsive pursuit of prey, and the father and son are left to hideout in an abandoned house, stalked in the distance by the undead leader. Jamie decides this is enough fun for today, and after the building collapses, they make it to the just-walkable path to their quaint town. But the alpha figures out that it too can traverse towards the entrance, chasing his would-be appetizer and main course almost to the gates. The district's watchtower is able to kill it, and a freshly drunk Jamie heralds his son as a far more capable killer than he was. This is where film flexes its artistic muscles, creating a disturbing montage of people celebrating like a cult in an entirely different kind of picture.

But Spike soon discovers his dad is having an affair- just what all zombie movies need, and thanks to some plot, learns that there is a doctor, though off on the mainland. A certain Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who lives in isolation for reasons I don't think the film ever explains. And because Spike is literally a twelve year old boy, he sneaks his mother (yes, the one who's spent almost the entire time covered in bed sheets) out of safety of their little neighborhood in search for a cure. This is the point where I just gave up, since A) there is so little security in a location there should be tons of it, and B) that Isla would be physically or mentally capable of walking such a great distance. This is the same woman who we saw unable to control her body as it aggressively twisted about her mattress, her shouting in agony; I'm sure she'll be nice and quiet as she tries to slip past a zombie.

But that's a problem throughout; you'd think that in a world where zombies prowl the land and seem to hunt based on noise, that you'd never so much speak in anything other than a whisper. But not in "28 Years Later:" people chat as if they're in a noisy nightclub, their friend an arm's length away unable to hear so they shout, laugh and exchange dialogue that is never as clever as the film thinks it is.

So back to what happens: it turns out a group of soldiers landed on the infected island, their ship having sunk, and despite having plenty of rounds of ammunition, they become fast dinner for the walking dead. Except for Erik (Edvin Ryding), who saves the protagonists when they're attacked at a deserted Shell gas station. There's a nice little gag where the "S" is missing so it reads "hell," but cute visual touches will get you nowhere. Erik is instantly unlikable, shouting at Isla for her outbursts and the like; he's the kind of character who exists in a movie like this only to die.

And then, I kid you not, Isla hears a noise, a painful moan of a woman in a neglected train car: it's a pregnant zombie giving birth. Instead of, you know, getting the hell out of there, she decides to help deliver the infant, even enlisting Spike to help cut the umbilical cord. It's a cool yet poorly introduced idea, one that opens a lot of possibilities of the reproductive and societal systems of zombies, but no, as soon as the unexplained not-infected baby is in the arms of the humans, the newfound mom attacks, is killed, and then an alpha shows up. This leads to another ridiculous moment, where a little boy and a sick woman carrying a newborn are somehow able to outrun a running zombie! And not just "any" zombie, an alpha, one that the film describes as being "like on steroids." Laughably absurd.

But then the doctor shows up to save the day, incapacitating the beast with a morphine dart. He takes them to his, uh, open-house concept, with a tower of skulls as its centerpiece. But he's not crazy (well OK maybe a little crazy), instead simply celebrating those who died. And, perhaps my favorite one yet, another completely preposterous scene where Spike, who just awoke from a morphine slumber because of plot, climbs atop the pyramid of human domes to put another one up there. I don't believe I've ever had the sedative myself, but I really don't think doctors recommend stuff like that.

Dr. Ian and the idea of a sort of monument for those who lost their lives is an interesting idea, but like literally everything else I like, it makes absolutely zero sense. This doctor, who has a seemingly infinite supply of morphine-spiked darts, never tries to kill the alpha that's been "living in the area for about three years" or something like that; we see it twice drugged up, only for people to run in the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure a swift ax swing or two would do the trick.

It's also never explained how doc is able to get all this morphine, nor is it outlined, outside of his unlimited narcotic, is able to survive all on his own; at one point he's surrounded himself with hundreds, if not more, dead bodies near him. I'm no zombie, but I would imagine the stench alone would attract some of the undead to stop by for a little snackie-snack. If I were though, I'd eat bad movies instead.

I suppose all of this is some sort of metaphor, but the characters make so many grossly stupid decisions that the film never escapes the trappings of the dumb horror movie cliche. And then there's the ending, which is not just a complete tonal shift, but feels like the theater accidentally mixed up the last reel with a different, much more entertaining picture, one that knows how silly all this really is and cherishes it.