Latest news with #AlexGarland
Globe and Mail
15 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Gnarly and fierce zombie sequel 28 Years Later was worth the decades-long wait
28 Years Later Directed by Danny Boyle Written by Alex Garland Starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes Classification 14A; 115 minutes Opens in theatres June 20 Critic's Pick It hasn't quite been 28 years since director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland breathed new terrifying life into the walking dead – by making them run like banshees out of hell. Their 2002 lo-fi apocalyptic thriller, 28 Days Later, which had Cillian Murphy scampering through the wreckage of London's Piccadilly Circus, not a soul in sight, stumbled into the post-9/11 moment with a story about a country decimated by a weaponized virus. Boyle and Garland, who only served as executive producers on the 2007 sequel (its story about U.S. occupation speaking directly to the Iraq War), are reunited in 28 Years Later. And if, like me, you expected them to double down on the relevance in a post-Brexit, post-COVID and war-addled moment, you'd be mistaken. 2025 summer movie preview: Superman, and a dozen other big-screen heroes, to the rescue There's room for those inevitable associations, for sure, but they're not insistent. Instead, this thrilling and effective reboot, a promising sign of what's to come, is happy to keep all that lightly baked-in while crafting a story more intimate and surprisingly emotional. Don't worry. If you're here for the gnarly splatter fest this franchise is known for, rest assured there are plenty bodies impaled or gnawed at, and even skulls ripped right from the neck, the spine dangling along as if the filmmakers are cribbing from Sub-Zero's finishing move in the Mortal Kombat video games. But at its heart, 28 Years Later is a Stephen King-esque coming-of-age story where death becomes a rite of passage for a child who is surrounded by the undead, anchored by young star Alfie Williams's tender and revelatory performance. His Spike, a 12-year-old boy whose fierce determination is at war with his intense vulnerability, is raised on a quarantined island. The only connection to the British mainland is a well-guarded bridge that can only be crossed at low tide. Negating the international viral spread promised at the end of its predecessor, 28 Years Later depicts a world that has successfully quarantined the pandemic to the U.K. Modern tech such as iPhones and social media have never touched Spike's island, a disconnect that sets up some of the funniest exchanges at the movie's halfway point. Instead, Spike's tight-knit community has reverted back to bows and arrows and working the land – and making raucous pub nights a tribal custom whenever a young lad becomes a man by venturing to the mainland to kill his first infected. What to watch this weekend: The Gilded Age on Crave has costume drama competition on Apple TV+ and BritBox We meet Spike and his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), when they take part in that ritual, navigating the mainland where the infected come in various states of deterioration. There are the slow crawlers, who slurp worms from the ground like appetizers before approaching human prey, alongside the more traditional fast runners. And then there's an Alpha, an evolved leader of the pack who is quicker, stronger and more tactical. Spike and Jamie's tour, scouring for the infected, is rather light on emotional stakes. But Boyle, forever a kinetic filmmaker and stylist, keeps things interesting with a jarring and haunting soundscape scraping together rhythmic radio transmissions from the past and accompanied by scattered archival images from British history – mostly past wars and war movies – disrupting the relative calm and keeping our nerves in a frenzy. When the infected do attack, and Spike and Jamie respond with their arrows, every kill shot is suddenly frozen, the camera rapidly swivelling around to a new position to absorb the violence. It's the visual equivalent of a record scratch Boyle hits maybe one too many times. Just when a sense of familiarity begins to kick in, 28 Years Later really gets going. After narrowly surviving his virgin expedition, Spike leaves the island once again, this time on a mission to save his mother (a brilliant Jodie Comer). The best summer movies of all time, according to our readers She's deteriorating, not from the infection but a different illness ravaging her body and mental state. He's escorting her to find a doctor known to be living in the deadly terrain, whom the islanders speak of in Colonel Kurtz terms. That doctor is played by Ralph Fiennes (crafty as ever), who we find covered head to toe in phosphorescent orange paste, surrounding himself with towers built from skulls and bones, underlining the playful Apocalypse Now references. 28 Years Later patiently builds up to these moments, during which the apocalyptic stakes are eclipsed by the warmth between the characters – their nurturing and protective instincts desperately clinging to joy, levity and the most comforting way to approach death. Boyle, who won the Best Director Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, has often let his sentimental side get the best of him. But here there's a maturity, gracefulness and elegance to how he hits those notes, though they're nearly undone by a goofy but admittedly fun coda setting up the series' next instalment. There's more carnage to come in this franchise where days turned to weeks, and then years, and the end persistently seems to be right around the corner (not just in the movies, mind you). 28 Years Later at least got me optimistic about what's next. Special to The Globe and Mail
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
28 Years Later writer Alex Garland reveals the ONE common misconception about the film - but can YOU guess what it is?
28 Years Later writer Alex Garland has revealed the one common misconception about the horror movie franchise. The third installment of the gory franchise was released in the UK on Friday, June 20, to much fanfare after critics described the movie as 'terrifying and electrifying'. Featuring a star-studded cast including Harry Potter actor Ralph Fiennes, 62, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 35, 28 Years Later sees Alex and director Danny Boyle reunite to an incredible effect. Their partnership first blossomed more than two decades ago with the series' opener 28 Days Later, starring then little-known Cillian Murphy, 49, as bicycle courier Jim, who had awoken from a coma to discover a deadly virus had taken over London. Though zombie-like in their appearance, Alex, 55, has now insisted that the creatures are not zombies at all, correcting the widespread misconception. Speaking to Polygon about how they portrayed the infected in their new film, Alex said: 'One (option) is: there aren't any infected left and life has gone back to normal, so that would be one sort of film you could do, sort of post-COVD film as it were. 'And the other is: no, the infection is still alive. Well, how could it still be alive? 'These are not reanimated dead people by some sort of supernatural means. They're people who have an illness or a condition or a virus, in this case, and so, how are they still alive? They need to consume energy, they need to drink.' Despite the franchise long being dubbed a 'zombie-horror', its writer has repeatedly fought against the movie being included in such a genre. It has been speculated that Alex's refusal to admit the franchise includes zombies was for fears of it being included in a genre of films considered 'low-brow'. And the star of the first film, Cillian, 49, agreed with Alex while speaking during the filming of SAG-AFTRA's Foundation's Conversation programme last year. 'I wasn't too aware we were making a zombie move, to be honest with you,' the Peaky Blinders frontman said. 'It was right around the time Sars happened and there was all this ''air rage'' stuff going on.' Whether zombies or just infected humans, the inclusion of the terrifying figures in 28 Years Later certainly caused a problem while filming the movie. Director Danny Boyle revealed they needed to take extra care not to have 'naked' actors on the set because they had strict rules in place to protect the film's child star, Alfie Williams. He told PEOPLE: 'I mean, if you're recently infected (with the virus), you'd have some clothes, but if you've been infected for a long time, the clothes would just disintegrate with the way that you behave. 'We never knew that (about rules governing nudity on set when there's a child present) going in, it was a nightmare.' In order to still film scenes featuring naked zombies while adhering to the safeguarding rules, Danny revealed the actors had to wear prosthetics. 'Interestingly, because there was a 12-year-old boy on set, you're not allowed for anybody to be naked, not really naked, so they look naked, but it's all prosthetics,' he added. 'So it's like: "Oh my God," so we had to make everybody prosthetic genitals.' The 28 Years Later mastermind said he was keen to push boundaries with the elements of nudity and gore in the film and he's glad studio bosses were supportive of his plans. He told Variety: 'I think one of the wonderful things about horror is that you're expected to maximize the impact of your story. Everybody wants to do that with a drama, with the romance, whatever. 'But with horror, it's obviously gonna be brutal, some of it. What we loved was setting it against an innocence that's represented by the various children in it, and also the landscape, the beauty of the landscape, the nature. 'Having those two forces stretches your story as far as you can go, if you maximize them. That was our principle and the studio was supportive of that, of course they were.' The new film - which is now available in UK cinemas after its June 20 release - has received a host of rave reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes for instance have handed the movie an impressive 94 percent critic approval rating after rounding up the thoughts of more than 91 film reviewers. The Daily Mail's Brian Viner was incredibly impressed after watching the series' latest gory installment, dubbing the movie the 'best post-apocalyptic horror-thriller film I have ever watched'. Brian wrote: 'With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic survivalist horror-thriller film I have ever seen. Which sounds like limited praise, yet it's a much more crowded field than you might think.' Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also handed 28 Years Later a rave review, with the critic scoring the 'terrifying' horror movie five stars out of five. 'Garland employs a strain of peculiarly British pulp humour - very 2000 AD, very Warhammer 40,000 - to undercut the ambient dread,' Collin wrote. 'And flashes of Arthurian fantasias and wartime newsreel footage (as well as a pointed double cameo for the now-felled Sycamore Gap tree_ serve as regularly nudges in the ribs as he and Boyle ty with the notion of a 21st century British national myth.' The film too received five stars from The Times critic Ed Potton, who hailed Jodie Comer's 'impressive as always' performance. The journalist wrote: 'Is this the most beautiful zombie film of them all? It's hard to think of another that combines such wonder and outlandishness with the regulation flesh-rending, brain-munching and vicious disembowelment.' The BBC's Caryn James gave the highly-anticipated film four stars out of five as she dubbed Ralph Fiennes's performance 'scene-stealing'. '28 Years Later is part zombie-apocalypse horror, part medieval world building, part sentimental family story and - most effectively - part Heart of Darkness in its journey towards a madman in the woods,' she wrote. 'It glows with Boyle's visual flair, Garland's ambitious screenplay and a towering performance from Ralph Fiennes, whose character enters halfway through the film and unexpectedly becomes its fraught sole'. Empire also awarded 28 Years Later four stars out of five, with journalist Ben Travis writing: '28 Years Later is ferocious, fizzing with adrenaline. The mainland thrums with a pervasive sense of immediate danger; when the infected arrive (and, do they arrive), it is breathlessly tense.' 28 YEARS LATER - THE REVIEWS The Daily Mail (FIVE STARS) Rating: With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic horror-thrill I have ever seen. The Times (FIVE STARS) Rating: Jodie Comer is impressive as always in the latest instalment of the post-apocalyptic series The Telegraph (FIVE STARS) Rating: This transfixingly nasty zombie horror sequel, starring Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, is Danny Boyle's best film in 15 years The Evening Standard (FIVE STARS) Rating: Jodie Comer, young Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes have a monsters' ball in this supercharged third outing for the 28 Days Later series BBC Culture (FOUR STARS) Rating: Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have reunited for a follow-up to their 2002 classic. It has visual flair, terrifying adversaries and scene-stealing performance from Ralph Fiennes. Empire (FOUR STARS) Rating: The sequel we needed is both the film you expect, and the one you don't. There's blood, but also real guts and brain and heart - visceral cinema soaked in viscera. The Guardian (THREE STARS) Rating: This tonally uncertain revival mixes folk horror and little-England satire as an island lad seeks help for his sick mum on the undead-infested mainland. The Independent (THREE STARS)
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Review: '28 Years Later' is a triumphant return, one of the scariest films of the year
"I need a shower and a lot of CBD." Putting it lightly, this was my instant message reaction to my colleagues leaving the cinema after 28 Years Later. Fingernails bitten to hell, I was a film critic shooketh to the core after seeing director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland reunite almost 28 years following their horrifying, groundbreaking, genre-disrupting 2002 film 28 Days Later. Since this series launched its grisly, running zombies, wildly popular series like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, and celebrated films like Train to Busan, satisfyingly filled the undead landscape onscreen. But Garland and Boyle bring fresh scares and existential dread, reminding audiences of the legacy their 2002 hit wrought. SEE ALSO: Should you watch '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later' before '28 Years Later'? One of the most unrelenting and scariest films of the year, 28 Years Later deserves the largest screen and sound system you can find — and serious guts. Almost three decades later, we're so back(bone). Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams) find their mettle tested. Credit: Sony Pictures Since the Rage Virus-infected doomed the United Kingdom in 28 Days Later, the country has been left to fester in its own pétri dish of irate contagion for about 30 years. Survivors are left to fend for themselves, with no international aid in sight. In fact, European quarantine boats patrol the surrounding seas making sure Britain knows where its own damned perimeter is (the word "Brexit" does not come up in this film, but come on…). In this doomscape, a small community has fortified an island off the coast of England, protected from the undead by the tides, sturdy walls, and a wealth of traditional grassroots design (thanks to production and costume designers Carson McColl and Gareth Pugh). Key resources for "Holy Island" lie on the mainland, a place deemed a rite of passage for younger residents to visit, including 12-year-old Spike (a solemn, raw performance from newcomer Alfie Williams). There's just one rule: If you leave and don't return, no one is allowed to venture across the causeway and rescue you. While his mother, Isla (an exceptional Jodie Comer), lies undiagnosed with illness and enduring her own private hell, Spike and his father, Jamie (an intense and sweary Aaron Taylor-Johnson) venture to the mainland for some father-son bonding and find nothing awry at all. Everything's peachy! Yeah, this is a 28 Days film, you know it's not. On the mainland, Spike and Jamie find their mettle tested in myriad dreadful ways. As expected, these rolling English hills are flush with infected, bloodthirsty humans, some of whom have unexpectedly evolved into new variations including the petrifying "Alphas". But there's smoke on the horizon, with the mystery of this ever-burning fire tempting Spike's curiosity further from the safety of his island home. You'll want to be back on that island pretty damn quick. Credit: Sony Pictures As a zombie film following in the footsteps of one of the most celebrated, brutal, and barbarous horror films of the 2000s, 28 Years Later holds nothing back on the violence scale, tween protagonist be damned! Boyle and Garland pull more than one skull-attached spine out of the hat throughout the film, throwing explosive blood spatters across television sets playing the Teletubbies, and teasing a mountain of skulls looming ahead, each moment a visceral strike for the viewer. This dizzying onscreen violence is bolstered by Boyle's signature brand of disruptive filmmaking. In one of the most striking sequences of the film, Boyle and editor Jon Harris take what might be a simple scene of Spike's first moments on the mainland and turn it into a frenetic, splintered montage. Intercut with father and son marching across an abandoned beach is a barrage of archival footage of child soldiers, clips from Laurence Olivier's 1944 Shakespeare adaptation Henry V (a movie "conceived as a wartime morale-booster" for British audiences during World War II), and the urgent, desperate voiceover of British writer Rudyard Kipling's 1903 war poem "Boots," which was also used in the film's riveting trailer. SEE ALSO: 20 of the best British horror films It's a distressing, abrasive, political sequence promising horrifying violence, shattered innocence, and national collapse. Even if you can't place the references in the footage you can feel the dread. At the film's start, Boyle has you both unsure and knowing full well what's to come, and it ain't good for Spike and his family. Uh, hey... Credit: Sony Pictures Doyle reteams with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who employed a famously rogue use of digital camcorders for both extreme close-ups and lonely wide shots in 28 Days Later. His new innovation is a mix of cameras that include a flotilla of 20 adapted iPhone 15s to create a bullet-time effect on some moments of pivotal violence, recalling the mind-blowing effect in The Matrix. Using these handheld devices all rigged up, Mantle deploys both distorted and awe-inspiring camera angles using Boyle's beloved sprawling 2.76:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Vile close-ups of the infected slurping away on various fleshy business deliver all the juicy disgust of Dennis Quaid eviscerating prawns in The Substance. However, Mantle also offers magnificent and terrifying wide shots of our protagonists roaming about the English countryside, akin to those incredible shots of Cillian Murphy wandering through an empty London in the first film. Such a wide frame urges us to recognize how exposed the survivor is in this feral terrain, the constant threat from a grisly death could be behind any tree or over the horizon — or, most terrifyingly, on the horizon. And supporting such fear is the superb sound design from Young Fathers. It's honestly hard to tell where the diegetic sound starts and ends. Credit: Sony Pictures Besides the stalking Alphas, 28 Years Later has another villain in Young Fathers. The Scottish hip-hop trio does not appear in the film, but they bring their signature experimental style to a hypnotic and merciless score that functions as an omnipresent threat. Their soundtrack simultaneously hums like a revving vehicle, flickers like a crow pecking at remains, shrieks like a human pursued by some grotesquerie, and echoes like an unidentified beast caterwauling into the night. With such sinister sounds, the verdant peace of the English countryside is pulverised, and also by the guttural screams of the livid undead. It's honestly hard to tell where the diegetic sound starts and ends, a state that becomes perilous when it comes to the film's outrageous bombardment of effective jump scares. It's a deeply affecting experience, the score and foley functioning as symbiotic beings, with one often indistinguishable from the other and forming one living, breathing entity. Thudding footsteps run parallel to booming drums, screeches and squawks blend with plucked strings, amalgamating into one out-of-body wall of sound that's impossible to escape. It all feels doomed, like the end is extremely fucking nigh — and yet Boyle finds a path of hope in the most unexpected place. In a landscape heaving with zombie apocalypse media from The Walking Dead to The Last of Us, 28 Years Later manages to declare its footing as an original monster. Magnificently shot, ruthlessly edited, and outrageously scored, it's a rambunctious, grisly, human tale of survival. Boyle and Garland, with their impeccably talented team and a magnificent cast — led by the young and wondrous Williams — manage to both connect their original creation with the present and forge a terrifying new landscape, one that will stress you out and make a meal of your own fingernails. 28 Years Later his cinemas June 20.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Should you watch '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later' before '28 Years Later'?
All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland return to the zombie franchise they kicked off in 2002 with 28 Days Later to offer the franchise's third installment, 28 Years Later. However, the 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, didn't touch on the characters of the first film at all. So, should audiences rewatch these movies before diving into the next chapter of this undead saga? 28 Days Later centered on Jim (Cillian Murphy), a lone man lost in a post-apocalyptic London laid low by the Rage Virus, which has turned humans into flesh-chomping infected. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, which takes place months after the initial breakout, focuses on a family of four whose reunion sparks a new breakout in a safe zone overseen by the American military. Now, 28 Years Later follows a father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his 12-year-old son (Alfie Williams), who scour a devastated United Kingdom for resources to bring home to their safe haven of a village. So how do these movies connect? SEE ALSO: Review: '28 Years Later' is a triumphant return, one of the scariest films of the year We'll answer that, and tell you everything you might want to remember before sitting down for 28 Years Later. Fear not — no spoilers for 28 Years Later lie below! The short answer is no. This franchise works as an anthology, with each film focusing on a different family unit, be it Jim and his found family of survivors, the Harris family from the second movie, or Jamie, Spike, and Isla (Jodie Comer) in 28 Years Later. But there are some key details about the Rage Virus and the infected that are helpful to remember going in. Plus, rewatching the prior films is a good way to get amped for 28 Years Later. How better to brace yourself for what Boyle and Garland have brewed for their intense return? To catch up on how to watch them, check out New to Streaming. In 28 Days Later, the story followed London bike messenger Jim (Murphy), who comes out of a coma 28 days after the city has been ravaged by a Rage Virus that's turned mild-mannered citizens into rampaging infected. This film, written by Garland and helmed by Boyle, introduced the Rage Virus, which takes only seconds to transform its victim into a new breed of zombie. Gone is George A. Romero's slow-walking undead. This infected person can run and isn't actually dead, so they can be killed by fairly conventional means — just avoid their infectious blood! Even a dead infected can be dangerous. Plus, they have no fear, throwing themselves full-bodied into any obstacle. So they are scary as hell as they run amok in metro or rural areas. 28 Days Later also introduced Jim's ad-hoc family of survivors, who learn through their rough time with a military squad that the UK has become a quarantine zone, with other nations surveilling to be sure it stays that way. Yet the film ends on a hopeful note, with Jim and his fellow survivors signaling a surveillance plane to show they're alive and uninfected. The sequel's ending, however, is far from hopeful. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and written by Fresnadillo, Rowan Joffé, E.L. Lavigne, and Jesus Olmo, 28 Weeks Later offers flashier slaughter scenes and the inclusion of American military figures played by Jeremy Renner and Rose Byrne. But the focus is once again on a family, this one reunited in a safe zone on London's Isle of Dogs. There, patriarch Don Harris (Robert Carlyle) is eager to reconnect with his children, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) — and also his wife, Alice (Catherine McCormack), the Typhoid Mary of the Rage Virus. Basically, Alice is infected, but not symptomatic in the way of the rampaging killers. A medic onsite (Byrne) suggests that her DNA could be the key to a cure for the Rage Virus. However, before that science can cook, Alice has a saliva-heavy make-out session with her husband, which sparks a new wave of infection in the safe zone, chasing the kids and their American friends to seek another safe zone. At the film's end, it seems the Harris kids will be OK, swept by helicopter to a safe zone in France. But the film's final image shows the infected swarming up from the underground trains of Paris, revealing the virus has hit mainland Europe. The only possible bit of hope is that young Andy appears to have the same genetic quirk as his mom, having been bitten but not turned. So, could there be a chance at a cure in 28 Years Later? You'll see. 28 Years Later opens only in theaters June 20.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Did you survive that '28 Years Later' chase scene? It was just as tough on the actors.
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 28 Years Later is full of terrifying moments, scenes in which the end is extremely f***ing nigh. However, one scene early in the film takes the cake as Scene Most Likely to Propel Your Heart Into Your Throat. We're talking about Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his son Spike (Alfie Williams) and their encounter with the evolved variant of infected, the Alpha. SEE ALSO: Should you watch '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later' before '28 Years Later'? These super-strong male zombies are near-unbeatable, with improved speed, agility, and intelligence over their infected brethren, whom they can command in a single horrible screech. During Spike's first excursion to the mainland, the father and son see a colossal Alpha looming on the horizon, and the next 12 hours are spent battling his legions of infected. "In the movie, you've gone for an interesting day out," Taylor-Johnson told Mashable. "Father and son have gone out to the mainland, he's going to show him the infected and see who they can hunt and kill, and it gets worse and worse, their situation, so the stakes definitely get very scary." However, it's the final chase, when Jamie and Spike are on the home stretch, with the tide lowering enough for them to cross the all-important but extremely narrow and long causeway to Holy Island, that the Alpha finally gives chase. Reader, it's one of the most frightening scenes you'll see all year, our protagonists scrambling through shallow water with the thundering Alpha on their heels, and Young Fathers' distressing score sending your heart rate sky high. "It was very intense. When you watch this movie, my exhaustion as Spike is real," Williams said. "The amount of takes it took was exhausting, wasn't it? I mean, you had to literally drag us through the water." "Terrifying, because the Alpha's like seven-foot-tall, so his stride would meet our every two," said Taylor-Johnson. "When we were out in the scene, it felt real, like we were being chased by the Alpha," said Williams. Hard same. 28 Years Later is out now in cinemas.
