28 Years Later

Twenty-three years ago was 28 Days Later, a film that divided our reviewers at Eye For Film. A lot of that differentiation came about because of familiarity with genre, an issue that recurred with its sequel. If you've read about or seen apocalypses then none of the tropes here are a revelation.

The profits were enough to get one sequel, and now years later another two. It's not obvious within the marketing nor in the film itself but there is another coming early next year, The Bone Temple. As with Dune it's difficult to judge something shot with succession in mind.

The already hazy chronology of the series is complicated by flashbacks and archive footage. The opening features the Teletubbies but it's not clear if that's on video. If it's broadcast that probably puts it somewhere between 1997 (28 years ago...) and the actual film, but some of this possibly becomes unreliable narration. The work I was minded of first was Russel Hoban's Riddley Walker, a novel of post-apocalyptic reconstruction. It was an influence on 1982's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and while some of its notes here are further filtered there are elements of location and even vision that match.

This isn't our world. It might not even be that of the films. Uncertainties include how what we saw at the end of the last one was stopped. There have been suggestions from authors but the diversions are part of the mystery. Walking across Northumberland from Lindisfarne we see the Sycamore Gap still standing, but we're not just geographically in the borderlands. We are somewhere variously liminal.

Alfie Williams is tremendous. In a cast that includes figures like Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer he more than holds his own. On the edge of adolescence, going through the rituals of manhood, his first time on the mainland, he's a force to be reckoned with. It's that small story of finding his place in the world that forms the line through the film, a mendicant meandering, a pilgrimatic progress.

As a flawed father figure, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is doing his best, but some of the dialogue he's been given is clumsily expository, and it sits uneasy in something that seems more metaphorical than morality tale. There are few others for them to interact with. The Holy Island has a community but it's as much signed as sketched. Erik might claim to be a Viking but he's as out of time as those of Tumult, some genuine comedy in his interactions with young Williams around how the world works. The weight of violence in the Danelaw has been explored before. Kill List and other works by Wheatley are another touchstone.

That's perhaps where 28 Years Later most meets expectations, by defying them. This is more traditionally a zombie film. Someone even uses the word. We're introduced to new aspects in the Slow Lows (pronounced without the space) and the 'Alphas'. They reframe the creeping horror of the masses as filtered through the runners into something more akin to an apex Predator. There are uneasy peaces and uneasy pieces in how Fiennes has made a place within the world and helps others to find theirs.

The journey might not be upriver but there's a heart (if not a head) of darkness at the end. Apocalypse Now Redux extends the episodes of interaction. 28 Years Later is more about setpieces than social situations but it's drawing the boundaries of a different world. One where death is always close to hand, and life as well. There are folk who suffer from getting out of the boat, more still who discover something lurking in the forest, in themselves.

There's plenty biblical to spot, repeated use of the cross and an early mention of The Day Of Judgement are joined by the flag of St George. The longbowman's a particularly English entity, and there's contrast in the ability of survivors and others to use bounding overwatch and indirect fire. The signs, angels and otherwise abound, but splatters of blood put the stress on the middle bits of allegorical. There's some very strong language to go with the violence, but the genital and reproductive go hand in hand with some of the film's other mysteries. Inland, on the mainland, there are more. Something has been happening, but what?

In its forays into territory others have charted 28 Years Later isn't perhaps setting a new course but providing a guide to others. As with Civil War there's a sense of it saying a lot without saying anything. Maybe that's enough. Writer Alex Garland's previous collaborations with director Danny Boyle have been a mixed bag. We also had more divergent opinions about Sunshine than we did about Boyle's earlier work in Leith.

Like the bone temple depicted here, and in part because of the eponymous film coming next year, this feels perhaps unfinished. Polished, undoubtedly, and with little meat on it. Visions of night vision and the porosity of time and memory don't hide uncertainty. The odd monstrance of thigh bones and ossuary pillars are a construction but the reminders of 'memento mori' are everywhere. One of those is 'Et in Arcadia ego', but this is far from a paradise.

It's close to a heroic journey and in parts its absurdity recalls 2000ad whose apocalypses include more than a touch of dread. There are horror elements aplenty, though here foxes are differently disturbing than those of Antichrist. I'm still thinking about it. I'll see the next one. That might be enough. Though perhaps I'm trying to eke something out of over-boiled bones, making a thin gruel of a broth with too many cooks. Time will tell. I'm not sure I can.

Reviewed on: 04 Jul 2025