Cast: Alfie Williams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Edvin Ryding, and Jack O’Connell
Director: Danny Boyle
Rating: 2.5
Three films were released in theaters this week: Pixar’s story on loneliness (Elio), Aamir Khan sharing the screen with special needs actors (Sitaare Zameen Par), and Danny Boyle’s return to zombie apocalypse (28 Years Later). And I can bet my soul nobody could have guessed the last one would be the most emotionally charged tearjerker of the three.
Right from its promotions to its trailer and even the way 28 Years Later opens, the Danny Boyle film is full of misdirections. We have been led to believe that it is an action-packed zombie horror led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, he of Avengers and Kraven fame (that last one may not be the perfect thing on the resume). But there is so much more to the film. Yes, it contains a post-apocalyptic society. Yes, there are zombies. Yes, there are lots of running and fighting. However, 28 Years Later is actually an emotional coming-of-age story disguised as horror. The heart and soul of the story is 14-year-old Alfie Williams, and he is presenting a performance that will likely be talked about for years, maybe decades.
The premise
As the title suggests, 28 Years Later takes place 28 years after the events of the first two films in the franchise. In Britain, it is a quarantine zone, overrun by the undead. The US and Europe apparently are thriving. But just off the coast of the Scottish Highlands, a group of survivors make their home on an island, which has a causeway accessible at low tide. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is taking his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) to the mainland for some land training. But Alfie discovers that his father has lied about many things, including the presence of a doctor. The 12-year-old decides to return with his sick mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), and ask the mysterious Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) for a cure. All this while, he must navigate his own inexperience, his mother’s hallucinations, and waves of the undead.
A work of art in the visual sense
28 Years Later begins on a disjointed note, and the initial setup does test your patience. But technically, the film hooks you in really quickly. The cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle and that haunting score from Young Fathers are brilliant. Mantle, in particular, brings the soul of the franchise back, merging it with a very Alex Garland-like visual style (the filmmaker is the writer here). The end result is an almost graphic novel-like work of art that may be abstract at times but visually engaging at all times. The score is a delicious cherry on top.
It may have been billed as a zombie horror, but 28 Years Later has less than 20 on-screen deaths during its near-2-hour runtime. The focus is more on survival and Spike’s crusade to find a cure for his dying mother. He is not afraid to fight back against his flawed father and even engage in some light arson to get his way. Alfie Williams is a star, one I hope gives us these performances for years to come. If Bella Ramsey was already setting the bar high for child actors in horror and fantasy shows, Alfie is taking it through the stratosphere here. Even with the legendary Ralph Fiennes in one scene, the 14-year-old is show-stealing, which is an impressive feat for someone so young and relatively inexperienced.
There is a moment just before the climax of the film in which young Spike must process mortality for the first time. It is a touching sequence, filmed with minimal background score and punctuated by Alfie Williams’ breaths. Just how beautifully Danny Boyle has managed it was evident by the pin-drop silence in the packed Mumbai theater where I watched the film.
The golden age of new horror?
The only blemish on the film is the bizarre final sequence, where Boyle brings his Trainspotting goofiness in a Tarantino-esque fight sequence that honestly feels a bit out of place in this film. But that can be overlooked for 110 minutes of classic cinema. If Nosferatu brought back good old noir to horror, Sinners married the genre with musical in a stunning experiment. And now, 28 Years Later brings a coming-of-age tale in the genre. That is three films pushing the envelope in the genre in the space of six months. The golden age of nouveau horror is certainly on in Hollywood!