Tom Salinsky

Sometimes you need a push to go back and watch a classic you missed the first time around. My watch-all-the-Academy-Award-Best-Picture-winners project was great for this because not only did I see some amazing winners for the first time, in the interests of putting each film in its proper context I also caught up on some other masterpieces made the same year. And regular readers may recall that I only watched The Day of the Jackal very recently because it had been turned into a TV series and I wanted to see the original first.

With 28 Years Later, the impetus was even more urgent because it suddenly seemed as if my entire podcast feed had been turned into people saying “We’re going to discuss that bonkers ending now, so here’s your spoiler warning.” I am also going to discuss that bonkers ending, so here’s your spoiler warning.

Now I couldn’t watch 28 Years Later because I hadn’t seen 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later, but luckily both are readily available on streaming services so here we go. I’m generally very pro Danny Boyle and 28 Days Later is the perfect example of his idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking, allied to a strong interest in bold clear narratives and engaging relatable characters.

The structure is absolute simplicity, almost simplistic. Delivery guy Jim wakes up in hospital, like Bill Masen before him, to discover that while he slept the world has ended. Alex Garland and Danny Boyle’s zombies – sorry “infected” – aren’t supernatural the way that George Romero’s classic undead are, but there’s only a thin skein of biological plausibility over the whole premise, which is easily punctured. (For that matter, nobody wakes up from a four week coma and is rampaging around a military compound like a one-man army a couple of days later, but whatever.) Like a good magic trick, the film makes sure you aren’t worrying about that; it keeps distracting you with far more interesting and exciting things.

Jim meets Selena and Mark. Selena and Jim kill Mark when he becomes infected. Selena and Jim meet Hannah and Frank. Soldiers kill Frank when he becomes infected. Soldiers try to rape Selena and Hannah. Jim kills all the soldiers. So, as is generally the case with this kind of film, the real villains aren’t the flesh eating monsters, but the amoral humans. Determined to cast unknowns in the leads (Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris for chrissake!) Boyle hired familiar faces Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson for supporting roles, but out of those familiar faces come very unfamiliar voices (Eccleston poshing up, Gleeson doing Cockney, neither very consistently). It’s a tiny flaw in a lean, propulsive thriller where the cheap-ass camerawork isn’t something that needs to be overlooked, it’s kind of the point.

The film was a sizeable hit and reinvigorated the zombie genre, giving rise to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the Pegg/Frost/Wright Shaun of the Dead, the seemingly endless The Walking Dead and so on. A sequel seemed inevitable, but when it came, Boyle, Garland, and the entire cast were nowhere to be seen. 28 Weeks Later does a decent job of getting the story going again, and has a cracking opening scene with Robert Carlyle leaving Catherine McCormack to die, but lacks any of the freshness and focus of the original. In particular, it casts around aimlessly for characters we’re supposed to care about, the baton being passed between Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau and Carlyle and McCormack seemingly at random. Everything that happens in 28 Days Later is based on the bond between Jim and Selena. In the sequel, some people try to survive and some do and some don’t. It’s not as compelling and I looked in vain for a relationship as strong and as interesting.

Although it made money, the second film wasn’t anything like as profitable as the first (which had cost half as much and took slightly more at the box office). So despite the demand, 28 Months Later never arrived. But now, 23 years later, comes 28 Years Later. That’s a big jump, and the storytelling reflects that. In the first film, Jim has skipped several weeks during which the country fell. In the second, the problem starts and then is contained over a few months. In the third we have a whole generation of characters whose only connection with the pre-Rage world is old VHS tapes and stories their parents tell.

Picking up one solitary thread from the previous film, Garland and Boyle (now back as writer and director) establish that Britain is sealed off from the rest of the world, with quarantine ships patrolling its borders. That’s another fascinating difference. Often this kind of film, being a vehicle for social commentary, has a rather broad approach to geography, seeking a universal appeal. So, the first film takes place in and around London because it has to take place somewhere. The second film, with its American Army focus, feels like it could be happening anywhere. But the third film is about Britain. It’s about cricket and Teletubbies and Jimmy Saville and Henry V, and Brexit – Boyle indulging his fondness for quirky cut-aways just enough to give the sequences a little boost of energy, not so often that it becomes tiresome.

In act one, overbearing father Aaron Taylor Johnson takes his young son Jamie (Alfie Williams) to hunt infected on the mainland with bows and arrows before they retreat back across the causeway to the safety of their compound. So far, so zombie, with just the tiny wrinkle that dad exaggerates tales of his son’s prowess in the way that a country that used to have an Empire still imagines that it’s able to punch above its weight.

But in the second act, Jamie and his sick mother (Jodie Comer, spectacular as always) seek out the dotty old doctor who is still living among the infected. After a sidequest in which the presence of Swedish SEALs briefly makes this feel like the suspense and gory action sequences are just going to keep ramping up, we settle down for a remarkably compassionate and heartfelt meditation on death, life, memory and dignity, anchored by a beautiful performance from Ralph Fiennes.

Add to this a satisfyingly detailed introduction to a more complex infected eco-system, and you have a rather surprising but thoroughly entertaining film which manages the trick of carrying on the story and giving me something I didn’t know I wanted, rather than just doing the same tricks again. And then we come to Jack O’Connell in a lurid shell-suit.

It’s one of the tropes of this series that you have to start with a prologue, so the title of the film can do double duty. Animal rights protestors free an infected monkey. 28 Days Later, Jim wakes up in hospital. Robert Carlyle runs for his life. 28 Weeks Later, he’s reunited with his kids on the Isle of Dogs. And here, a young boy sees the local vicar seemingly welcoming in hoards of infected. 28 Years Later, he’s become – not the very slightly unhinged father figure played by Aaron Taylor Johnson as we are no don’t intended to conclude – but cult leader Sir Jimmy Crystal. It’s a violent left turn and in a Marvel movie would no doubt have played as a mid-credits scene, but given that the fourth movie (directed by Nia da Costa) is already in the can, I’m all for this kind of throw-forward. And I don’t want the next film to repeat the third film any more than I wanted the third film to repeat the first film.

As to the evocation of the horrendous Jimmy Saville, it’s easy to conclude that this is just being done for shock effect, but I’m happy not to pre-judge. Icons of evil can be powerful storytelling tools and the image of cuddly Jimmy, friend to children, who was actually a vile sex criminal who abused his power, is a potent one. But to find out whether that story is used carelessly or pointedly, we’ll have to wait until January.