Directed by: Danny Boyle
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Written by Taylor Baker
82/100
It’s been 23 years since Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s “28 Days Later” hit the silver screen. After its debut in 2002, the genre began churning out entries that drew large audiences, from 2005’s “Shaun of the Dead” to 2009’s “Zombieland”. Looking back now, it seems that AMC’s adaptation of “The Walking Dead” comic series in 2012, alongside “Game of Thrones’” white walkers, was the final height that the shuffling undead achieved in pop culture. Since then, the zombie craze—like the vampire and werewolf crazes before it—has died down. Though the fad has passed out of the zeitgeist, “28 Years Later” shows there’s still opportunity to experiment with both narrative and form in the genre, despite what on paper is a deceptively paint-by-numbers plot arc.
Danny Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle bring invigorating and imaginative lens work, their employment of iPhone cinematography, particularly the slow-motion approach during kill and chase sequences with repetitive cuts to approaching zombies. The styling of light dancing across the lens evokes the signature pastiche of Michael Bay, yet is distinctive and careful enough to feel wholly of itself.
Garland’s narrative is misleadlingly simple–our core Joseph Campbell hero’s journey of a young boy reaching manhood through a quest with his father that one might find any elementary school chapter book. But the way the narrative constrains itself in tandem with Boyle’s direction allows the audience not only to go along for the ride but be excited by the conventional nature of the story.
After the first act, our young hero Spike (Alfie Williams) returns with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) from killing his first zombie and has a party thrown for his coming of age. Rather than relish in the celebration, Spike follows his father in the dead of night and watches him betray his mother. This betrayal is the final instigation Spike needs to grab his ailing mother (Jodie Comer) and leave after hearing of a doctor who lives by a fire that he saw on his hunt with his father the day before. decides to run off with his ailing mother. Each of these individual character moments feels earned despite their by-the-books narrative nature. This is nearly every young adult novel ever written to a T. Still, the world is so lived-in, the cinematography so energizing, and the performances so convincing that one can’t be bothered by the narrative convention we’re witnessing.
What makes Boyle and Garland’s series different from so many others in the genre is that their narratives are driven by their characters. Instead of a plot and devices that the narrative shoehorns its characters into, the narrative and plot match the characters’ emotions and choices. “28 Years Later” offers a feeling of reality, of grounded characters working through something tangible that takes viewers along in ways that typical zombie thrillers won’t. Comer, Williams, Taylor-Johnson, and Fiennes each deliver performances that on their own are worthy of praise, but enmeshed together conjure something tangible that lasts long after the film has ended.
“28 Years Later” delves into something more profound; it operates more in the realm of John Huston and Billy Wilder, where world-building emerges organically from character development, enhanced by the director’s signature techniques. The subject matter differs, but the macabre, the dark, the sincere human emotions and journeys we follow remain true.
“28 Years Later” Trailer
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