Not quite 28 years have passed since the first of 28 series, 28 Days later (which came out in 2002), Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and DP Anthony Dod Mantle reteam for the 3rd, and the first installment of a planned trilogy, 28 Years Later. While stylistically similar to the first one- shot with iPhone 15, instead of Mini DV of the first one, to keep up with times, and frenetic editing, there is no coherent narrative thread carrying over from the previous ones in the new one. It is stated in title cards that Continental Europe has eradicated the rage virus but the islands of England and Ireland are permanently quarantined and monitored by NATO patrol boats.
28 Years Later's setting is a self sufficient community in a small northern island off of the mainland, accessible only by a walkway that only opens in low tide. It is an ideal situation after the apocalyptic events: communal living where everyone is taught to have a role and contribute and share resources. These are all shown in Boyle's fast paced montage sequences. The meat of the plot is kind of a coming-of-age story of Spike, a 12 year old boy going to the mainland to hunt the infected, along with his father. It is a ritual of sorts for the surviving villagers. He has a terminally ill mother and there is no doctor on the island. The legend has it, there is a mad doctor who lives on the mainland.
Spike and his father's first outing introduces the bloated, slow moving, crawling zombies and scary, fast zombies alike, all naked and very cavemen-like. The chase sequences provide some good adrenalin rush. Disillusioned by his father's deception, Spike sneaks out to the mainland with his mother in order to find the mad doctor, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). He and his mother run into a Swedish Nato soldier mired in the mainland alone after his boat sank. Then there is zombie birth - how? Zombies have sex? The baby is not infected? Negates all the gene mutation theories of 28 Weeks Later? Then he finds Kelson, who wears iodine all over his body (that wards off the infected - according to him), and lives among the pile of human skulls and bones. He has crematorium and pyre burning day and night and has a very Buddhist view on birth and death.
Boyle and Garland is not really up to making a blockbuster here, even though 28 Years Later is extremely Spielbergian- full of sentimentality with half-assed philosophizing. The super tight trailer with Rudyard Kipling's creepy WW1 poem promised an exciting summer blockbuster ride. But Garland's fuzzy writing in this - referencing unintentionally hilarious medieval war footage that looks like a skit from Monty Python and equates that to surviving zombie wars and isolationism while saying very little about either, zombie baby birth and track suit wearing "I kick ass for Jesus!" religious cultist, is too scattered and lacks cohesion, as usual, just like the icky third act of the original.
As it clumsily sets up for the sequel by the end of the film, I am hoping that Nia DaCosta, who is slated to direct the next one, will take us into another direction and leave this silliness behind.
