28 Years Later

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Confession: I like zombie movies. From “Night of the Living Dead” to “Dawn of the Dead,” from “Zombieland” to “World War Z,” I revel in watching a good zombie apocalypse.

Back in 2002, British director Danny Boyle (Oscar winner for “Slumdog Millionaire”) used a post-apocalyptic zombie theme with his film “28 Days Later.” In it, Cillian Murphy (Oscar winner for “Oppenheimer”) starred as “a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to discover that the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus has caused the breakdown of society.”

A group of animal rights activists had infiltrated a laboratory, allowing a chimpanzee infected with a Rage Virus to escape. The chimp bites an activist; she attacks her comrades; before you know it, the virus has spread across the entirety of Great Britain.

Sidenote: This storyline was conceived long before the COVID virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

Although Danny Boyle did not consider “28 Days Later” to be a zombie film, screenwriter Alex Garland admits he took his inspiration from George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”

Boyle preferred to think of it as a horror flick. But then, zombie films are a subset of the horror genre.

In 2007, a sequel titled “28 Weeks Later” picked up on the theme. This time around, the plot involved the arrival of American troops about seven months after the events in the original film.

That same year, Boyle and Garland announced they had mapped out the storyline for a third film, to be called “28 Months Later.” However, with the vicissitudes of moviemaking that film didn’t get made until now. The delay required them to retitle it as “28 Years Later.”

Boyle says, “We flirted with it for a long time – that’s me and Alex Garland – because it was clear that it had sustained its popularity. Not only the original film, but obviously the stuff like that that builds on the popularity of the idea. We always used to joke that we wish we’d got a percentage of ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘The Last of Us’ and all this kind of stuff.”

You can catch “28 Years Later” currently screening in local theaters.

As the title implies, twenty-eight years after the Rage virus escaped from a research laboratory, pockets of uninfected people have managed to survive. One group makes its home on a small island connected to the mainland by a heavily defended causeway. Among them are Isla (Jodie Comer), her husband Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and their 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams).

When Jamie and his son leave the island on a mission to the mainland, a rite of passage that includes killing an infected zombie, they discover the horrors of the outside world.

Ralph Fiennes joins the cast as Dr. Ian Kelson, another survivor of the outbreak. Jack O’Connell shows up as Sir Jimmy Crystal, a cult leader with a dark history. And Chi Lewis-Parry plays the Alpha leader of the infected ones.

“At the beginning, you think, oh, it isn’t just like the first film where everyone’s like, ‘Are they infected? Are they not?’” says Danny Boyle. “It’s a key question, but people have become, not blasé, but they become more accustomed to the danger so that they learn how they can flex and still stay safe like we all did with COVID, just the same.”

Another film in the series – “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” – was shot back-to-back with this one and will be released in January. Although directed by Nia DaCosta, it will include “plenty of crossover casting.”

After that, there is one more planned sequel to come, promises Danny Boyle. Rumor has it that the last entry will mark the return of Cillian Murphy.
IndieWire calls all this a “gory, juicy, and beloved zombie series.”

Of course, I agree. Particularly about the juicy part.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com