Boyle – a one-person British cinema movement, among the slowly disappearing MTV generation of filmmakers – brings back the frenetically-cut montages.
One tends to forget how formal and dull a majority of mainstream filmmaking has become until a true-blue swashbuckling director comes along and destroys our notions of what films should look like. It happened to me during the opening stretch of Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later, which begins with a strange corner-angle shot (by Boyle’s regular, Anthony Dod Mantle) showing a bunch of children, cramped into one room, watching an episode of Teletubbies.
The handy cam aesthetic paints dread into the visual – as does the commotion outside as we hear elders scream at each other. And suddenly the door breaks, and in classic Boyle fashion, we’re racing through narrow hallways, to open fields with the “infected” chasing a young boy called Jimmy. It’s a sublime opening sequence filled with paranoia, thrill and weighty subtext, as Jimmy’s father – a priest praying inside the local church – awaits these undead (zombies), calling it his judgement day.
Boyle – a one-person British cinema movement, among the slowly disappearing MTV generation of filmmakers – brings back the frenetically-cut montages (which have all but disappeared). But one can also trust his subversive instincts to draw you in for one film, and present you with another. 28 Years Later is not your average zombie thriller – and it becomes apparent in the way the film quickly gradually shifts tones a few times, as things pick up 28 years later after that opening sequence, in a quarantined community in the Scottish Highlands.
Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is making breakfast for his son, Spike (debutante Alfie Williams) on the day he takes him for his first kill on the mainland. Jamie’s wife Isla (Jodie Comer) resists her son being put in harm’s way so early in his life, but her illness only means the resistance is feeble at best. The community where the family resides is separated by a causeway, visible for a few hours under low-tide, otherwise submerged under water. Priming him to be a scavenger like himself, Jamie is encouraging of the 12-year-old Spike, even if the community’s elders think he’s a couple years too early to be exposed to the mainland.
Written by Alex Garland, the zombie thriller soon morphs into an indictment of toxic masculinity. Jamie seeks to wring out every last drop of empathy from his adolescent boy – as he teaches him to aim at and hunt the undead. A frightful test awaits him in an abandoned building, where a seeming corpse is tied upside down, only to realise that they’re alive and infected. “The virus takes away the mind. No mind, no soul,” Jamie tells Spike, telling him to point his arrows at the upside-down figure and kill him.
Spike, superbly played by Alfie Williams, is a confused and fearful young boy – still questioning his father’s way of doing things. After the duo narrowly escape an Alpha (a leader of a group of zombies, whose physical ability significantly improves after getting infected) – Jamie tells tall tales of Spike being brave and killing many of the infected. Having done the opposite, Spike feels like an impostor, and begins to distrust his father. Another character talks about the Alpha being a version of Viking – according to Nordic folklore – where the virus mutates and turns human beings into apex killers.
Boyle has an inherent talent for working with young actors – as we’ve seen in his earlier films Millions (2004) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008) – and he shows plenty of that talent here too. He cuts Jamie and Spike’s sojourn to the mainland with archival footage of World War II footage, possibly trying to draw parallels to the ‘warrior’ mindset that turns a nation into a wasteland. As Spike, Williams shows bits of kindness, his sense of duty, confusion and a silent rebellion.
Having discovered there’s a doctor who might be residing on the mainland, who might be able to cure his mother – and after telling Jamie to stay away – Spike and Isla undertake the perilous journey to Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). After a thrilling 20-odd minutes, Boyle and Garland once again press the breaks – meditating on the meaning of mortality. This sombre stretch in the film feels coloured by the sheer number of deaths the world saw during the Covid-19 outbreak, and lack of dignity in most of them. “There are many kinds of death, some are better than the other,” Dr Kelson tells Spike, telling him to embrace death. Especially in a world where it might sneak into us through an invisible virus.
As Dr Kelson, Fiennes is appropriately awkward, giddy and wise as someone who has spent more than a dozen years talking to himself. It’s an incredible performance by Fiennes in a brief role. As Isla, Comer is a haunted character oscillating between the primal impulses of a mother, and a drifting child needing her son’s care during her episodes. It’s this stretch featuring Spike, Isla and Dr Kelson that really won me over. Boyle and Garland transform what might have been a zombie thriller into a moving coming-of-age tale.
However, keeping with Boyle’s manner of doing things – 28 Years Later ends on an unusual, irreverent note, revealing a group called the Jimmies – which might be among the coolest sequences I’ve seen on the big screen this year. From the looks of it, the last bit is a baton piece for the storytelling to spill over for two more films, one directed by Nia Da’Costa and another one by Boyle, poised to release in the next two years. I’m not being cavalier when I say this when most franchises and IPs are met with a gag reflex, but I can’t wait to see what they do next.
28 Years Later is playing in theatres.
The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
