vol. 6: help i can't unsee the zombie peen from 28 years later :(
On 28 years later - the goriest film for me so far this year and i am noping at those zombie appendages. Thanks so much for reading, i love you!!!
Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is visceral, gross and so unhinged!!!! BUT what I liked about it is that it’s partly a coming of age story with a really nice emotional through line about family, grief and growing up.
The story focusses on a family - Isla (Jodie Comer) who is ill with an unknown disease, her husband Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and her 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) who live on an island that’s protected from the undead. Jamie and Spike venture over to the infested mainland and it goes a lil downhill.
This film had a hodgepodge of ideas and story, at times it felt like three movies rolled into one, and the ending felt so random, but if you kinda just go with it, it works!!
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes
spoilers for the film
This is a great zombie film, but it’s also very gory, violent and has some imagery that I would have been happy never seeing in this life (full frontal naked alpha male zombie man, a pregnant zombie giving birth!)
The set up and world building is great - a community in a post apocalyptic world are just trying to exist and survive and make the most of a shitty situation - they’ve adapted by fishing, making lots of bows and arrows, and fortifying their island from the mainland.
Hope Island is separated by a causeway that’s only accessible by low tide and there’s rules if you leave - if you go on an expedition over to the other side, there’s no search parties or rescues if you go missing (ominous).
“There’s a kind of ruthless, pragmatic, dog-eat-dog dimension to the ways things play out when a nation collapses. Broadly speaking, people not affected by the collapse ignore it and just go about their lives,” - Alex Garland, writer
On their little gander over, lil Spike sees a cozy fire which he learns is where a surviving doctor lives (Ralph Fiennes’ Dr Ian Kelson), so he wants to take mum to get a diagnoses for her illness.
Williams plays the son, and he was such a stand out - very believable, not precocious and forced to grow up way too early, very thematic for Young Adult stories. He’s the heart of the film and you really root for him!
One of the concepts introduced in this film is how the zombies have evolved over the past two decades - which means massive zombies, also slower slug like ones (Slow-Lows the production notes tell me!) but also full frontal nudity and it’s… overwhelming!!
There’s one alpha zombie, played by Chi Lewis-Parry who is a multi-hyphenate - an MMA fighter, actor, body guard and 6’8”!!!!!!!!!!! The filmmakers said they increased proportions of everything by about 40% because the Rage Virus basically acts as a steroid/growth hormone. (He wore a prosthetic penis).
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The editing is quite frenetic and hectic and over the top. Stylistically it’s the same as the previous films. This time they shot certain sequences on iPhones, which the production notes says equates to a ubiquitous version of 2002’s camcorder, which makes sense because it’s got a super handheld feel at times.
The pièce de résistance of the film is the Bone Temple, made up of 250,000 replica bones and 5,500 skulls (according to the film’s produciton notes). It’s Dr Kelson’s home and it’s an elaborate set piece that’s revealed in the film’s third act:
My lil qualm is that I found the ending was jarring - Jack O’Connell makes a last minute appearance as a Jimmy Saville-esque tracksuit wearing zombie mercenary with his boy gang, but it kinda flipped the switch on the whole movie and felt entirely separate in the feel, look and tone. They shot this film and the next installment (due out in January 2026 atm!) back-to-back so it was a bit of a teaser of what’s to come but it was so camp and out of the blue I kinda got whiplash.
Overall I really enjoyed this film but if you’re squeamish or hate gore, I wouldn’t recommend it. 28 Days Later was a great zombie film and this is a great third chapter in the franchise.
Other zombie content I recommend:
Films: Zombieland (2009), Warm Bodies (2013), Train to Busan (2016) - which also does running zombies very well.
Books: Severence by Ling Ma (one of my fave books ever!!)
🐕 Are there dogs in the film? 🐕 nooo
🎄 Is it set at Christmas? 🎄 noo
👗 Who is the best dressed? 👗 everyone is just surviving to be honest
Stuff I bookmarked this week:
✿ Superman director James Gunn has some opinions about the film industry
✿ Really keen for the new Jurassic Park which looks like it has elements of horror (my only sadness is Jonathan Bailey’s American accent - wish they kept his British one!)
✿ Some more BTS with Sofia Coppola, this time on make-up looks in her films
✿ I did a double take at the winner of this Pedro Pascal look-a-like comp:
🐶 Pupdate 🐶
Warmest virtual hugs
Thuy