28 Years Later

Who knew a coming-of-age story with a couple of zombies thrown into the mix could be so compelling!

Taking place, you guessed it, 28 years after the original Rage Virus outbreak, 28 Years Later follows a small community living on the British Isles as they try to co-exist alongside the U.K.’s remaining “infected” — aggressive, quick-moving creatures that are basically zombies in all but name. Focusing on the familial bond of Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his teenage son Spike (Alfie Williams) as they venture into the quarantine zone, it isn’t long before their adventure soon turns sideways. Facing violence, terror, and a few twists and turns along the way, Spike must quickly become the man he was always meant to be. But when his mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), becomes increasingly ill in a way that Spike may not be able to do anything about, Spike is forced to come to terms with surviving not only against the infected that are constantly threatening his life, but the very real idea of his mother and father’s eventual demise.

A sequel almost two decades in the making, 28 Years Later reunites original 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland for a film that successfully recaptures what made the original so great while still finding effective ways to tell what is essentially a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. Full of quiet character moments, blood-drenched action beats, and even a few scenes that took me off-guard in their willingness to have real conversations about life and death, 28 Years Later is a far more meticulous affair compared to a regular old zombie flick, with its efforts in putting its characters first and its brutal violence in a close second turning this sequel into a film that works on multiple levels.

Spattered with a healthy dose of inventive kills that deliver on the blood and gore inherent to a movie like this, 28 Years Later goes one step further by pioneering a unique way to film some of these kills via utilizing an array of iPhones rigged in a device that can only be described as a Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Disk card holder for cell phones. I won’t spoil what the in-camera effect looks like, but suffice it to say that when you experience it for the first time, you won’t miss it, nor will you be able to stop thinking about what the filmmakers had to do to pull it all off. Really cool stuff.

All that said, there are a couple of things I didn’t care for that brought the experience slightly down for me. The much-discussed tonal whiplash of the film’s final moments notwithstanding, there were a few instances that felt too dissimilar compared to the rest of the movie in ways that took me out of the experience. Whether it’s some less-than-stellar computer effects/green screen work cheapening an otherwise gorgeously shot film or a few instances where cheesy dialogue and unintentionally funny moments break a particularly scary or emotionally intense scene, these end up being more nitpicky issues than anything else, but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

Additionally, since I would almost consider this movie more of a drama than a straight-up horror film, the story’s pacing gets bogged down from time to time in a way that helps the character work but hurts the overall flow of the plot, leading me to wonder if a more trim final cut would have helped matters. Still, there really isn’t much to complain about here, with any further issues people may have with it depending on whether you wanted this film to be an all-out gore fest or the more measured story of living and dying at the end of the world that it actually is.

Though it’s true the film’s final few moments throw a head-scratching wrench into things virtually without warning (it should have been a post-credits scene instead), I’m hoping the already shot sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, will follow this tag up in a worthwhile way. 28 Years Later is a great coming-of-age story that just so happens to involve flesh-eating antagonists, and as long as the care and attention paid to crafting this one carries into any sequels, count me in for whatever zombie-tinged adventure comes next.