“Blood makes me nauseous.”
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) reinvigorated the zombie genre, transforming the lumbering braineaters of Romero’s cinema into hyperactive fiends that would rip their own bodies to shreds to get at their quarry; namely, uninfected human beings (which technically means they’re not zombies, but whatever, we’re in the hybrid zone of vampire-zombies which is more exciting because tropes can be selectively ignored).
In the Year of Our Lord 2025 Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland—who, in the ensuing years, has developed his own stellar body of work as a film director—returned a few weeks ago with 28 Years Later, a film for which I’m going to make my yearly pilgrimage to the theater. I’ve seen 28 Days Later at least four times, but somehow never managed to see the first sequel, 28 Weeks Later—probably because it’s universally considered inferior to the original. And because Boyle’s established a reputation as an auteur while Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is basically unknown outside of this film and thus I thought of it along the lines of, I don’t know, Return of the Swamp Thing (1989) or RoboCop 2 (1990). And because every time you watch a film that means you’re necessarily not watching a million other ones; you’re also not spending time with your kids1 or reading all those books stacked up in the spare room or playing guitar or hanging out with your buds or taking long walks on the beach or what have you.
Anyway, 28 Weeks Later. Better than I was expecting. Fairly pegged as generic and underwhelming when set against its prototype, but effective at subjecting sympathetic characters to brutal evil. A half year after the initial zombie apocalypse has petered out, the US military (represented by Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, and Harold Perrineau) is helping to reestablish British civilization by watching over a safe haven on the Isle of Dogs where a medical officer (Rose Byrne) screens all the residents and studies the virus. The emotional core of the film are a brother (Mackintosh Muggleton) and sister (Imogen Poots) who are reunited with their father (Robert Carlyle) and then their mother (Catherine McCormack), whom they believed to be dead, only to lose both of them in short order when the parents’ tender liplocking leads to a fresh outbreak. The mother, thought dead, is found alive and quickly slain; the father, now infected, stalks the safe zone thirsting for the blood of his children. It’s a little cheesy, but not as egregious as having the entire plot jammed into the two main characters—the youngest people in the world, the only people who’ve ever tried to sneak out of the safe zone, whose mother is the catalyst for restarting the apocalypse, which they are then walking potential cures for, surrounded by professionals to tell them all the key info and help them navigate the chaos.
One might argue that the two films are primarily distinguished by the differences between Fresnadillo’s slick-choppy aesthetic, overlapping storylines, and shallow political themes, and Boyle’s high saturation camcorder chic, personal narratives, and thematic quirkiness. And while I prefer most of the choices of the original, the sequel never wavers in its conviction nor feels stylistically neutered by operating in the shadow of Boyle’s unique project. Vigorous and unflinching, it shows soldiers shooting civilians, firebombers destroying the city. Not subtle, but effective.
Maybe 28 Weeks Later slightly suffers the fate of many second films in a series in that it doesn’t fully manage to be the-same-but-different in that nebulous way of good sequels. But it’s a very good zombie apocalypse film that excels at what it set out to do and I’m glad I took the time to watch it before heading out to see Boyle’s sequel.
1. To be clear, I think watching films with your kids is fine. Two birds with one stone! But my kids range from barely potty trained to not being able to say words yet and so in this specific case, choosing to watch a zombie movie where a woman’s eyes are gouged out and a father tries to eat his children just barely crossed the line into unsuitability for such an occasion. They loved Snow White (1937) though.