Directed by Danny Boyle | Written by Alex Garland | ▲▲1/2 | Crave
OK, apologies for that headline, but there is truth in advertising.
About halfway through this return to the world of 28 Days Later from original creative team Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, I started to wonder why so many of the “zombies,” or humans infected by the rage virus, were naked. That suggests they’d been zombies for years and managed to survive, even thrive, after their modesty had been forgotten. Even in the wintry, sub-zero weather in Northern England and Scotland? I have a lot of questions, but maybe this is all just a Biblical allegory — an early scene with a priest welcoming his infection suggests as much.
I also anticipate the big fans of this movie — and I can see online there are a few — will come at me like the infected because I’m not raving about it, accusing me of not really being into horror. They’ll be right about that, but I do like horror that works, that’s genuinely frightening rather than just plying disgust. This works in places, but it’s surprisingly uneven. I’m also looking for updates to the genre parameters, something we haven’t seen before. I am impatient with horror movies’ frequent need to regurgitate.
Boyle pulls all the production stops this time. He likes ratcheting up energy and terror with rapid-fire cuts (with frequent collaborator, editor Jon Harris) and a scrappy visual banquet (ditto, DP Anthony Dod Mantle). This time they shot using iPhones with multiple lenses to evoke the grainy low-rez digital of the original film. The scenes of infected running brings a bit too much shaky-cam queasiness for my taste, but it’s undeniably effective.
We’re in a sanctuary town on an island off the British coast that is inaccessible but for a causeway, conveniently submerged in high tide. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, working his negative charisma) takes his 12-year-old son, Spike (Alfie Williams, excellent), on a coming-of-age adventure, to kill his first infected on the mainland. That doesn’t go well, not because Spike isn’t capable with a bow and arrow, but because Jamie is a careless, somewhat toxic father.
The film is split in two, with a second half that is more about the relationship between Spike and his ma, Isla (Jodie Comer), and a character played by Ralph Fiennes, who brings a real Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now quality to the production.
Boyle and his collaborators overlay echoes of English exceptionalism using shots of Laurence Olivier in Henry V, that Second World War, government-sponsored bit of morale-boosting, religious iconography, folk horror, and even a touch of the 1960s Brit new wave in the family drama at the centre of the story — all of this effort lifts what might be considered conventional post-apocalyptic vision. I think it’s asking, what is left at the end, what essential part of the country’s character survives? The movie is also, naturally, death obsessed — I didn’t expect it would thematically parallel David Cronenberg’s recent picture.
But Garland’s script, if anything, is too obvious and not interesting enough. It delivers a clever circular character element — someone we meet in the opening scenes appears in the final one, but it ends up a cliffhanger for future films. It’s annoying. The domestic issues between Jamie, Isla, and Spike are soapy and sometimes clunky — it’s nothing we haven’t seen before done better. I’d direct audiences to Jodie Comer’s first film with her name above the title, The End We Start From, which has many of the same end-of-the-world themes, but finding a way to be more modern and emotionally engaging.
Boyle and Garland can be credited with starting a new wave of zombie horror with 28 Days Later, sequelized by another creative team in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later. Since then we’ve had The Walking Dead, the deeply moving series The Last Of Us, ice zombies in Game of Thrones, even Jeff Barnaby’s terrific indie Blood Quantum. All of those have built on the foundation laid by Boyle and Garland, but it means that when these two talents come back to their common material, they have to face high expectations they’ll forward the genre. They do some good work splashing about in a familiar, bloody pool, but I wouldn’t say much here is new.
