{"id":9334,"date":"2025-06-24T00:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T00:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9334\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T00:16:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T00:16:10","slug":"28-years-later-showcases-the-evolution-of-the-zombie-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9334\/","title":{"rendered":"28 Years Later Showcases The Evolution of the Zombie Franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains spoilers for 28 Years Later<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWhen 28 Days Later<\/a> hit the scene in 2002, it changed the landscape of horror cinema. It is perhaps all too easy to take director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland\u2019s film for granted today, particularly in the wake of the zombie movies and TV shows that followed. Sure, we could split hairs over what constitutes a zombie film and whether 28 Days Later<\/a> and its infected, albeit living, rage monsters fit within that designation. But, given the variations of the zombie over the decades, the influence of the video game Resident Evil on Garland\u2019s script, and the glut of zombie media that followed 2002, it feels fair to say 28 Days Later became the most consequential film of its subgenre since George A. Romero\u2019s Night of the Living Dead<\/a> (1968). <\/p>\n

\n\tLike Romero\u2019s foundational film and its sequels, 28 Days Later held a mirror up to society and asked what Britain would look like when its traditional values were obliterated and the notions of polite society were snuffed out. Now, two decades later, Boyle and Garland have returned to the Land of the Rose with the first part of a new trilogy, to see what his risen there.<\/p>\n

\n\t28 Years Later picks up nearly three decades after the outbreak of the rage virus. Europe has beaten back the infection, save for the British Isles, which have been quarantined, cut off from the modern world and its progress. Its inhabitants were left to fend for themselves against the evolved infected, building villages and coming up with their own means of survival, rules, and traditions. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, we\u2019re introduced to our lead characters, the 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and his parents, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer). The safety and insular nature of their village has allowed for the traditional family unit to exist once more. But they are frayed from the start due to Isla\u2019s illness, which has affected her memory and mood, making her unable to recall conversations that happened mere moments before, and sending her into bouts of rage, reminiscent of the infected. The toll of Isla\u2019s illness, and the unwavering love Spike has for his mother, as well as the revelation that his father, Jamie, has been drawn into the arms of another woman, sets Spike on a journey to find the mysterious, and potentially mad, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), to beat back death and save his mother and family.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyone expecting a retread of 28 Days Later, or its less intimate, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo-directed sequel, 28 Weeks Later, might be surprised to find, unlike so many recent horror legacy sequels, Boyle and Garland have no interest in covering old ground. This is true both in terms of the narrative and style of 28 Years Later. <\/strong>Perhaps bucking those expectations is partially why there\u2019s a disconnect between critics, who gave it an 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences, who bestowed it a 65 percent.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut neither Boyle nor Garland is the same artist they were in 2002, and the latest entry in the franchise reflects both filmmakers\u2019 current preoccupations. For the last decade, Boyle has developed a particular fascination with frayed familial relationships and how memory either breaks those connections or creates a path of redemption and identity. His films Steve Jobs (2015), T2 Trainspotting (2017), Yesterday (2019), and miniseries, Trust (2018), each highlight this line of thinking. What we remember or choose to remember can be salvational, but also damning.<\/p>\n

\n\tGarland, who made the successful leap from screenwriter to director-screenwriter, has focused on death \u2013 of humanity, of ego, of country, and of patriarchy. But in Garland\u2019s films, Ex Machina (2014), Annihilation (2018), Men (2022), and Civil War<\/a> (2024), death is a forebearer to evolution, and freedom for better or worse. While the two filmmakers have taken different paths since their initial collaborations together, their thematic insights on memory and death, and redemption and evolution can be paired well together. But when those themes are broken apart and reworked, they start to scrape against each other, not fitting but gnashing with an uneven bite through which the horror manifests and feels most urgent.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of the core of the franchise is based on tradition. And tradition is a symptom of family and community. Theoretically, the farther people move away from those elements, the more corrupted truth and identity can become. 28 Days Later revolved around found family and the lengths people will go through to maintain it. There is still a sense of loyalty and chivalry, and it\u2019s key that Jim (Cillian Murphy) goes to his parents\u2019 house and pores over pictures and video recordings. He is rooted in the values of the family and society he was raised in, and the film\u2019s ending optimistically reflects that he\u2019s not alone in that. <\/p>\n

\n\t28 Weeks Later suggested that family was an impossible unit to maintain, killing off every parent and de facto parent who emerged as a protagonist. Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) worries about forgetting what his mother looked like, so his sister, Tammy (Imogen Poots) gives him a family picture. The picture is later burned in the chaos, and the fate of the children is ultimately left unknown. There is no family, no history. 28 Years Later showcases the potential for tradition and history to become corrupted, and questions what people become as a result.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are elements of 28 Years Later that find Boyle back in 2012 Olympics mode, for which he directed the opening ceremony<\/a>, Isles of Wonder, a multi-media ode to British history and culture. That exercise celebrated connectivity and was partly inspired by author and philosopher G.K. Chesterton\u2019s quote, \u201cThe world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder.\u201d As much as Boyle wished to highlight where the United Kingdom had been, he also aimed to comment on where it could go if its people continued forward with open minds and curiosity. <\/p>\n

\n\tEight years later, the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union in what is commonly known as Brexit. The result of Brexit has left a negative impact on trade relations, not only in terms of the economy, but also on art, culture, education, diversification, and community. 28 Years Later permits Boyle to undertake another multi-media experiment, but rather than an ode, it\u2019s a condemnation of Brexit, nationalism, and the stagnation that follows when humans employ selective memory and refuse to let things die and evolve.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDanny Boyle\u2019s 28 Years Later.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of SONY Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tSpike\u2019s village, absent of the comforts and hazards of modernity, is built on fragments of British identity. Flying the Flag of England, the village emphasizes ritualism, isolationism, and masculinity through archery. The village survives by way of repetition, but it never moves forward. The film\u2019s use of Rudyard Kipling\u2019s poem, \u201cBoots,\u201d written about the Second Boer War, and performed by Taylor Holmes, highlights this. On the surface, the Holmes recording, used in the U.S. military\u2019s SERE schools for its psychological effects, sets the stage for what, in Jamie\u2019s eyes, is an adrenaline-fueled war between humans and the infected. But 28 Years Later is explicitly not a war film. So then \u201cBoots,\u201d which plays as Spike and Jamie cross the causeway between their Island and the mainland is a warning not aimed at the infected that lie before him but the village behind him who have ceased to wonder and live by the line \u201cDon\u2019t \u2013 don\u2019t \u2013 don\u2019t \u2013 don\u2019t \u2013 look at what\u2019s in front of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBetween shots of Spike and his father killing infected with arrows, Boyle intermixes footage from Henry V (1944), notably the scenes related to the Battle of Agincourt in which the outnumbered English troops defeat the French army through their skill with the English longbow. The film, directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, was part of Winston Churchill\u2019s efforts to boost the morale of the British troops near the end of World War II, and as a result, many of Henry V\u2019s negative actions from Shakespeare\u2019s play were removed so that the film could better serve as propaganda. This footage, juxtaposed with the seemingly anachronistic yet beautifully striking score by Young Fathers, a Scottish progressive hip-hop group, tells the story of two Britains, one caught in tradition built on self-edited historical propaganda, and another that, through extradiegetic music, speaks to what can be created and achieved through the trade of new ideas, cultures, and a willingness to wonder.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile we\u2019ve seen the kind of Lone Wolf and Cub-inspired narrative plenty of times in genre storytelling from Aliens to The Last of Us, 28 Years Later takes a surprisingly different route after the first act with Spike taking protective care of his mother as they travel across the mainland. The narrative serves as a bildungsroman for Spike as he learns about the world and moves away from his village and his father\u2019s mode of thinking. Isla\u2019s ability to find humor in life and connect Spike\u2019s image with that of her father gives him a new history to connect to. And even as death threatens them at every turn, Spike discovers that there is also new life, and the promise of evolution as he and his mother discover the infected can procreate and give birth to uninfected offspring.\u00a0With a newborn in tow, he and his mother continue in their search for Kelson.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is an Arthurian approach that Boyle and Garland take to Spike\u2019s narrative, particularly in the vein of T.H. White\u2019s The Once and Future King. Spike\u2019s eventual meeting with Dr. Kelson subverts expectations. While Kelson, bald and yellow, skin covered in infection-fighting iodine, immediately conjures up physical comparisons to Kurtz, Brando\u2019s iteration in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Apocalypse Now (1979), and psychological comparisons to the indelibly British version from Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness (1899), whose belief in colonialism became a desire for extermination. <\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, Kelson is a Merlin-esque figure imparting wisdom on Spike, most importantly, memento mori, which translates into remember death and remember you must die. Kelson offers a perspective on death that isn\u2019t filled with terror, but rather an appreciation for humanity. His bone temple, and the centerpiece, a tower of skulls, serves as a tribute to the communal nature of life and stories. He respects the past and what it offered the world, but sees it as a way forward. People, ideas, and villages must die so that humans can move on and venture into new territory.<\/p>\n

\n\tKelson\u2019s lesson not only pertains to Spike being able to let go of his mother, who Kelson diagnoses with terminal cancer, but also to let go of traditions and patterns of thinking that no longer serve the future. The memory of English nationalism Spike was raised with, along with the fear of outsiders, has kept Spike from the potential of discovering redemption for humanity. When Spike climbs to the top of the bone temple and places his mother\u2019s skull towards the sun, he is claiming his identity, much like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. <\/p>\n

\n\tHis decision not to return to his village and his father signifies freedom from an insular past but also sets him on the path of finding his own identity. But with no other means to ensure the survival of the newborn, whom he names Isla after his mother, he delivers her to the village, noting that she was born of an infected but isn\u2019t infected herself, and asking them to be kind to her. While there\u2019s no telling what the next two films might have in store for her character, knowing the traditionalism of ritualism of the village, there is perhaps some allusion to Arthur\u2019s sister Morgana, who became his downfall.<\/p>\n

\n\t28 Years Later is very much a Part I movie, with an ending that sees Spike meet a new and dangerous group of characters. The Jimmies, a track-suit-clad cult led by Sir. Jimmy Crystal (Jack O\u2019Connell), who is tied to the film\u2019s prologue, and Britain\u2019s more recent history and media personalities, notably sex predator Jimmy Savile, serve to further highlight the generational consequences of isolation and selective history.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n\tThis first chapter sets a bold new course for the franchise and has the potential to be just as consequential a mirror to society as the original was. No longer primarily concerned with adults who remember how the world was before, Boyle and Garland ask that we do look at what\u2019s in front of us and see what became and will become of children raised in a world of historical and pop cultural ruins without context, and without an understanding of momento mori, as they devour things best left dead and become yet another iteration of zombies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains spoilers for 28 Years Later.] When 28 Days Later hit the scene in 2002, it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[481,171,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-9334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-28-days-later","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114735467280007933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}