“There are strange people on the mainland,” says Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). “That’s why home is so important.” The danger lies abroad. Director Danny Boyle has so far been using his PR tour for “28 Years Later” to take over the job that the audience should actually take over: to interpret the “elevated horror” level, the figures like Jamie. This zombie film is his criticism of Brexit. Because it is not good to choose the seclusion. Boyle describes the Brexiteers as idiots.
The return of the British Zombie albaum
“28 Years Later”, his continuation of “28 Days Later”, tells of that. From that geographically conditional feeling of fear and pride felt by many citizens of the island. No national borders may mean freedom and security from unpleasant neighbors. But in an emergency of a war, also disadvantageous being alone. Zombie quartanta as a receipt for passionate, albeit in Brexit voting only with a short majority of isolationism.
The island as a symbol for Brexit isolation
On a Scottish, a few square kilometers tall island, a community (its folkloric fiddel-diddel life is reminiscent of the Borat-Kasachstan) in front of the rage virus, which has long since been contained 28 years after the outbreak. Rage only rages on the British islands, where people are left to their fate themselves. Jamie goes on a mainland tour with his son Spike (Alfie Williams) so that the 12-year-old becomes a man, killed a few infected people with a bow and arrow, sees the world out there for the first time and then prefers to return to the familiar Eiland. Boyle assembles some scenes of films in his departure recordings in which brave knights ward off the siege of the castle.
Jamie and Spike cross the dam, march into the forest. You see a warship in the sea. “Quarantine control,” says Jamie. “Probably the French.” Because if you want to leave Britain, you will be killed. Also a punch line: would Europe want to have the British back after the Brexit?
A new generation in the Old World
At some point a Swedish soldier strands on the British mainland. He has to explain to children like Jamie how civilization has developed without British participation. That there are now smartphones, “like a radio, only with photos”. The fact that on these cell phone photos people with beauty operations can not be seen that the youngest British generation, whose body positiveness life has been reduced at the middle-level level (the soldier Erik serves exactly the only reason to show the protagonists what they miss outside-it is not necessary for history).
In the forest they meet “Slow-Lows”, creeping zombies on the ground. Jamie says: “But these are no less dangerous”. Perhaps an insider joke from Danny Boyle and his author Alex Garland, who made the race zombies popular with “28 Days Later” in 2002. And at the time about the “forefather of the undead”, George A. Romeropublicly amused because he would have no more terrified with his lame rifles. The comment of Jamies appears as a postum’s offer of reconciliation to the director who died in 2017.
Because “28 Years Later” was a sensational success in 2002. Boyle and his author Alex Garland, influenced by the Playstation game “Resident: Evil”, revived the zombie genre. Even if the rage mutants are not undead, but insane, permanent aggressive people with personality loss. Two years later, George A. Romeros “Land of the Dead”, Edgar Wrights “Shaun of the Dead” and Zack Snyders “Dawn of the Dead” remake. Since then, zombies have been considered the most cash -striking monsters, even if new impulses are no longer set in this film genre.
More than mere horror
For “28 Days Later”, Garland and Boyle were influenced by the fears of the new millennium: before cattle disease, mouth and claw disease, Ebola, Nine-Eleven-Terror. The virus also served as a metaphor for the increasing everyday rage. At the turn of the millennium, the term “road rage” became popular, today there are dozens of collections from “Road Rage”-, “Train Rage”-or “Air Rage” snaps, in which more or less peaceful people, an incorrectly set autoblinker, a sneezing neighbor in the close wooden class, are a danger to their fellow citizens.
Rage also found a (much copied) expression visually. Boyle developed a technical presentation optimization of his mutants. With its Canon-XL1-DV cameras, it was able to produce pictures with exaggerated hard movements thanks to their availability of enormously short shutter speeds. He fully exempted this function and also removed every third or fourth picture, which led to a staccato effect in the result. The sequence of the sharp -edged and incomplete individual images looks like they are not just jumping, but skipping each other. These creatures ran like the devil without moving a lot.
A drama in a small scale
As a political film, as a Brexit film, “28 Years Later” is as convincing as its predecessor. Boyle and his author Garland had a plan. They implemented it. This is Garland’s first script without directing since “Never Let Me Go” from 2010, and “28 Years Later” should be an argument for him to concentrate on writing after four bad directorial work in a row, “Annihilation”, “Men”, “Civil War” and “Warfare”. Like Shyamalan: ingenious author, bad director.
And as in the best zombie films, no world break -in story is told in “Years” with globally collapsing civilizations, the generals and doctors of which discuss the background of an illness. But a drama in the microcosm family. So the big one in the small. Spike wants to leave the isolation of his community “The Village”-in order to get help for his mother (Jodie Comer). Isla (the name!) Throws around on her bed like Linda Blair and pushes out curses, but spike fears that she could not only be mentally ill.
Between art and gore
“28 Years Later” has some impressive set pieces, above all the chase of an “Alpha” zombies (unfortunate “walking dead” terminology) over a dam road. The escape from this monster is accompanied by Wagner’s “Rheingold” preliminary prelude. As if the slump of the wild into the village community could lead to unexpected feelings of happiness.
This is a zombies-in-der-nature film that actually only gave an idea of evil after the trailer, since he looked like a “walking dead” offshoot with lookalikes by Rick and Carl Grimes. (On the other hand: “TWD” creator Robert Kirkman was obviously inspired by “Days” for the first-person awake-out and-the-world-it-different start of his comic))
The fan service grabs deep
“28 Years Later” is created as a start of a trilogy, and because the “28” franchise has produced a lot of fan fiction in the past 23 years, Boyle and Garland are now trying to canonize biological questionnaires. There is also fan service. As usual with Boyle, some non -counter -looking needle drops (as using the example of Richard Wagner). An abandoned petrol station is not marked with “Shell”, but only marked with “light”, a hint to the “light (o)” sign on the beach from part one. The Jumpcut from the killed alpha to the village pub, in which hero stories are swung, is reminiscent of Leonardo dicaprios of rapidly assembled bravery stories from the moved shark in “The Beach”.
Body, virus, reproduction
In “28 Days Later” there were many dead, but not a single gore moment, no separated body part, not a recognizable bite. The ambiguity not only lowered the price of special effects, it also made the infected people mysterious organisms. They didn’t seem to be interested in (human) food. They could not be seen in a feed orgy, the Money Shot of the Splatter Cino. Many of the raging were satisfied with spitting blood in the face so that the virus gets into the mouth, eyes, ears or nose. So the rabidy was about multiplication, not nutrition. And in “Days” it remained unclear why the infected people collapsed in the end.
It is different in “28 Years Later” who eat mutants whenever they can. And not only multiply through droplet infection, but also through sex. Questions arise here: Why do all alphas look like Jason Momoa? Does the virus make you so big and strong, or are only born leader Alphas? What do the infected do with the newborns – all of whom are born healthy? Unfortunately, Boyle and Garland submit to the dictation of a suspect of the global zombie community that would definitely want to see an evolution of the stupid wide in zombie continuation films. Master Master Romero also underlaid this compulsion and showed Zombies as a learning capable of learning that can become leaders of their kind, which is why “Land of the Dead” and “Survival of the Dead” were so school championship.
Placenta magic and alpha zombies
The mutants’ babies are naturally protected. “This is the magic power of the placenta,” says Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a hermit that is as much a land doctor like shaman. Above all, he is wild keeper. He does not want to kill the alpha named Samson. He only stuns it, with his anesthetic arrows from the wind tube. Kelson has recognized the coexistence of this new, at least equal way of life. It is astonishing that Ralph Fiennes plays a role in a horror film, which presents him as calmly as rarely. Standed by the shooting of his “Odysseus” film, the 62-year-old shows himself here with convincing, naked upper body.
Kelson is a survivalist, a figure that we hopefully meet again in the following films, even if his motivations appear doubtful. He stuns Spike to make him unable to act in an upcoming critical life event with the consent of Spike’s own mother. What can you say: Spike got spiked.
A mixed legacy
Will “Years” be as groundbreaking as “Days”? Certainly not, but that doesn’t work either – the genre had redefined “Days”. But the characters, Jamie, Spike, Isla, Dr. Kelson, are far more complex than it was Jim, Selena and Hannah in “Days” (Hannah’s father Frank was already more interesting). Cillian Murphy has been as present than ever since his Oscar win for “Oppenheimer”. But not in this film. You don’t think of your Jim once, and where he stays.
Danny Boyles Triumph at the Oscars with “Slumdog Millionär” in 2009 did not make him courageous as a director, although his recent films were at least experienced in a experienced way, also thanks to the cooperation with script dialogue greats such as Aaron Sorkin (“Steve Jobs”, 2015) and Richard Curtis (“YesterDay”, 2019). Nobody saw his two streaming series, those about the Getty son and the sex pistols. The comeback is to be desired. “28 Years Later” once again proves that Boyle is both: an actor director and an effect director.
For his directorial successor Nia Dacosta, who is currently filming the second part “Bone Temple”, he left a poisoned gift. “Years” ended with a fight that looks like this as if the Cobra-Kai-Dojo had hijacked the shooting. This staff will be seen in the “Bone Temple”. With them, Cillian Murphy is allowed to play around, who returns as Jim.