In the current trend of sequels arriving waaaaaaaaaaay after they would've been useful comes 28 Years Later, the third installment in the series of Danny Boyle & Alex Garland's series which began with 2002's 28 Days Later and 2007's 28 Weeks Later. While not technically a zombie series - the Rage virus infects and changes its victims into monsters within seconds - it's the source of the abominable fast-running zombie species which populated Zak Snyder's 2004 breakout remake of Dawn of the Dead.
After a prologue that seems utterly superfluous until the last minute, 28 Years Later is the story of Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old boy living on a small island off the coast of England with his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kick-Ass), and mother, Isla (Jodie Comer, Killing Eve). The entirety of England is quarantined and left to fend for themselves while the rest of the world apparently goes on as if animal rights lunatics hadn't unleashed a plague in their countries. The island is connected to the mainland via a causeway which is impassible any time other than low tide which helps in defending the small, but thriving community there.
Jamie decides it's time for Spike to make his first trip to the mainland and hopefully get his first zombie kill, a major rite of passage. The village elder doesn't approve because boys are usually 14 or 15 years-old when they make their first jaunt, but allows it after explaining the rules that anyone who goes out is on their own, no one will come to their rescue if anything happens.
The hunt goes OK until a pack of infected led by a larger, smarter Alpha chases them into the ruin of a house where they're stuck for the night due to the tide being in covering the causeway. From his perch in the attic, Spike sees a quarantine patrol ship & a fire off in the distance. He asks Jamie what it is, but dad demurs. When the house collapses, they barely make it back to their gate as the Alpha gains on them.
The town throws a celebration for Spike popping his zombie hunting cherry, but Jamie keeps exaggerating Spike's bravery & killing skills when he missed most shots and almost got them both killed. Disgusted, he leaves the party and spots dad getting super friendly with a townswoman not his wife. While it's somewhat understandable because Isla is racked by delirium & disorientation, mistaking days, people, referring to Spike as her father, Spike just sees his mother being cheated on.
When he gets home, he tells the family friend watching Isla about the fire and is told it may be the place of Dr. Kelson, a former general practitioner whose abode he'd approached some time after the plague and what he saw scared him from ever returning. But Spike hears "doctor" and believes his mother may be helped, so he bundles this infirm & not-totally-with-it woman up for a road trip farther than he barely survived before.
I've had a major problem with Garland's scripts for almost every movie he's written because he nearly invariably manages to crash a working movie in the third act or finale, but here he outdoes himself by making the plot lose me barely halfway through. The idea that this kid, who barely survived his first trip to the mainland is going to successfully shepherd his mother to find the doctor just didn't work. The sidebar of a military squad getting wiped out by infected is poorly premised. That there are now supersmart Alphas and families of zombies that look like giant waterlogged babies after 28 years is a huh? That there is a pregnant zombie is a double huh?
It all caps off with Spike choosing to stay on the mainland and almost get killed until he's saved by a weird group led by someone the audience probably forgot about and as soon as they're introduced the movie ends. WTF?!? Turns out a sequel, 28 Weeks Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DiCosta (last seen making the all-time biggest box office bomb of the MCU, The Marvels) from a Garland script, is coming in January. Oh, lovely.
Williams is very good as Spike, only annoying because the script writes him that way. He could have a future after this series. Taylor-Johnson and Comer are equally reigned in by the script, but do with it what they can. Fiennes is also good, but his character is just a weird caricature.
I've never been a huge fan of the 28 Days/Weeks series, especially the first one's third act. Part of the knock on 28 Years Later was that it's not more of the same, and while that could've been a good thing because it's unlikely conditions would be exactly the same after three decades, what Garland comes up with is just dumb. Why didn't the world try to evacuate people from the island? Symptoms manifest within seconds so you just put evacuees into a holding pen for a couple of minutes and everyone who wasn't trying to eat the rest gets to board a boat to safety.
The 4K HDR presentation results in some occasionally brilliant photography with hyperreal colors. The hyped bullet time effect created by using an array of iPhones around the subject is a gimmick that doesn't really land and there are some shots that appear shot on phone which gives a member berry for the low-fi original movie's look.
I'm sure we'll eventually catch the sequel when it hits video, but I'm not expecting much better than what 28 Years Later sets up.
Score: 5/10. Skip it.
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