Upon its release in 2002 28 Days Later was a modest success, grossing $80 million on a budget of $8 million. With its gritty, punky, video aesthetic and character driven story (not to mention fast-zombies!) it helped revive the ‘zombie’ genre. Though its director Danny Boyle does not consider it to be a zombie film, its influence on that genre of film (and television) over the next decade or so is clear. 2007’s 28 Weeks Later could not continue the quality of the first one, an attempt at being Aliens to 28 Days’ Alien. But the love for 28 Days endured on despite this, hence a sequel.
One might assume, particularly in the current milieu of Hollywood releases, that a sequel made so long after the previous instalment would have one thing on its mind: money. But the film certainly does not come across like that. It may well make plenty of money, but that is clearly not primary in the thoughts of the film’s creative forces. Alex Garland, who wrote the first one, and Danny Boyle, who directed the first one, have collaborated once again and in some ways this film does feel like a spiritual successor to 28 Days.
28 Years Later is packed with ideas, there are so many sometimes one is not sure what to do with all of them. There are plenty of theological allusions, ‘family’ exists at the heart of the film (unfortunately, no Vin Diesel), we get monologues on Death, and interesting period-British iconography. It may be a little overfull, and other topics are brought up and left less explored, like what strange society the rage-induced seem to have created, but in general the topics all fit in to the fundamental journey, in true coming-of-age fashion, of Spike (Alfie Williams). Williams is excellent in the lead role and at no moment falters. To carry a film on your shoulders like this is a tough ask and he certainly rises to the challenge. It is through his eyes that we see the world.
On the island off the island of Great Britain, where Spike resides, there is a community of survivors that in their depiction is harkening back to some post-war Britain. Images of Queen Elizabeth II adorn the village hall, which is itself immediately recognizable to any Brit, as a rural village staple. There is something here about a retreat to the past when there is no immediate future, or at least no discernible one. We get the sense that they are surviving, but just about. That hard choices lay ahead. But Spike is seemingly oblivious to this, at least at the beginning of the film.
As events unfold, he becomes sceptical firstly of his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and thusly of the community as a whole. On his journey (literal and figurative) he meets the strange Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) who is busy compiling a temple of skulls. This is some of the film’s most potent imagery, a temple of bones surrounded by these large threatening spikes in the ground. Kelson has made it his duty to maintain a reverence of life through the continual acknowledgment of death. And death is something that Spike soon has to intimately grapple with.
Boyle imbues all of this with his typical energetic style. The camera cuts rapidly and moves and shakes as it wants. It is shot in very mobile fashion (haha), almost jarringly so. And there are moments of startling use of colour, like the bizarre red-hued night scenes in which the rageful engage in their ritual feasting. And as was the centrepiece of the marketing, Taylor Holmes’ rendition of Kipling’s ‘Boots’ is haunting and evocative of something truly disturbing. It is matched with images of past wars, particularly of the medieval era, comparing a certain picture of England with the post-apocalyptic land it now is.
The film is often bizarre but with just about enough self-control to stay on the right tracks. And it is a ‘mainstream’ film that is trying something, that possess its own style and its own substance. I appreciated it for that fact alone, the fact that it mostly succeeds is just a bonus.
CineLiterate 