Movie Review: 28 Years Later – more family values than zombies.
28 Days later is a standout movie for how it disrupted the archetypal dystopian movie model. With its stuttering zombies a whole new sub-genre was created, most notably the Walking Dead. The set up was distinctly English with the London Cab and the accents. And the story line was brutal, with the army lads looking for women to raise their morale. But it was the film score that not only added to the horror but was so memorable. The engaging plot made this movie so watchable for me. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later was a damp squib and emphasised how difficult sequels can be.
So what did we expect from 28 Years Later? Well, what happened 28 Years Later. So what do we have? We have a movie with Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Cillian Murphy all having an input. So what this movie obviously lacks in budget is made up by the creative direction and production. Or so you would think.
As I watched the movie my growing impression was how much this was not a 28 Days Later follow on movie. Irrespective of what the introduction suggests with England in quarantine. Firstly, the original film score is not present; without the famous film score the movie loses an edge and sense of it being a 28 Days Later movie. Secondly, the zombies have changed and lost their sense of horror. There are the pathetic slow blobby ones – what is the point of them at all? There is an alpha who rips off heads but the overall zombie horror is lacking.
The plot starts well as the father and son relationship takes centre stage with their trip onto the mainland. Then the plot plays mind games as everything seems to flip. The father – son relationship seems to becomes toxic and the son runs off to his mother instead. The safety of the Lindisfarne village is also questioned as the son leaves them for the mainland. The lies from the adults about a doctor on the mainland are also exposed as he, Ralph Fiennes, is revealed as a jolly, if eccentric, chap.
The boy has that vulnerability we saw in the son in A Quiet Place, and carries the movie well. But the ending is unconvincing as we are expected to believe a 14 year old boy will leave the safety of his village for the mainland full of zombies.
At times it struggles to rise above being a television movie with its fuzzy plot – the post apocalyptic battle between the infected and non-infected is lost. There are moments when we see flashes of Norman soldiers and other themes that smack of a running out of ideas.
The Englishness of the movie is typified by a moment of going off topic when the Swedish soldier shows the boy a picture of his botox riddled girlfriend on his phone only for the boy to ask what is wrong with her face. Funny it certainly was, but out of place in this movie. The final scene was bizarre – a group of men who seemed to have walked out of Sixties movie – obviously a hint of the next movie.
I sorely missed what I had hoped for – a 28 Days Later follow up movie. Engrossing in its characterisation of family relationships but it was a long way from being a 28 Days Later movie.
