Latest news with #zombies
The Sun
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
28 Years Later film review: This strangely beautiful film is electrifying and fizzing with adrenaline
28 YEARS LATER ★★★★★ 3 IT seems to be the season of the sequel, with a whopping 19 follow-ons being released this year. So it was with some trepidation that I watched another instalment from Danny Boyle's 2002 cult classic, 28 Days Later. My concerns quickly disappeared when this astonishing film started. Having dipped out of directing 2007's 28 Weeks Later, Boyle is back with writer Alex Garland to make a terrifying — and strangely beautiful — film. We meet the family of Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his wife Isla (Jodie Comer) and their son Spike (Alfie Williams) in their threadbare house on an island off the coast of North-east England. It's 28 years since the deadly virus escaped a weapons lab, and while much of the rest of the world has carried on, Britain is in quarantine. That means if you're on it, you are never getting off. Zombie hunter Pockets of communities around the country have tried to survive, including this one. The island feels very The Wicker Man — an eerie hierarchy has been created and beliefs have a cult-like following. The men and women have traditional roles. One of those is the men go to the mainland, crossing the defended causeway, to hunt zombies. Jamie has been training 12-year-old Spike to become a zombie hunter and the pair leave the island with their bows and arrows to take some hits on the bloodthirsty undead. Meanwhile, Isla is bed bound, fighting another illness that's quickly making her lose her grip on reality. It makes for a fascinating juxtaposition between the family members, and Comer, as always, is spectacular. Jodie Comer looks striking in a metallic silver dress as she leads stars at 28 Years Later Boyle cuts back and forth to black-and-white war footage of young boys being trained, reminding us that Britain has a long history of sending our youth off to fight. It's only the enemy that changes. During his heart-racing expedition, Spike realises all is not as sold by his dad. There are other things happening on the mainland — and the infected are their own civilization now. The thumping soundtrack by Young Fathers is electrifying and fizzing with adrenaline. Very much like this film. Closing on a cliffhanger, and with two more films to come, it's good to know they're coming back for another bite. THE. LAST JOURNEY PG (95mins) ★★★☆☆ 3 THIS warm, funny and often deeply moving documentary charts Swedish TV presenter Filip Hammar's attempt to bring his 80-year-old father Lars back to life – figuratively, at least. Since retiring from his job as a French teacher, Lars has become increasingly withdrawn and frail. So, Filip decides to buy a battered old Renault 4, and whisks his dad off on a nostalgic road trip to the south of France, hoping to reignite a spark. They're joined by Filip's longtime TV partner Fredrik Wikingsson, and the pair's banter keeps the film fun, even as emotional undercurrents start to appear. The journey is nearly derailed early on by a nasty fall, and though Lars is slow to warm up, glimpses of his old self soon begin to reappear, particularly when surrounded by the culture and language he has loved for so many years. At times, the film veers close to manipulation. But what shines through is Filip's deep affection for his father, and a quietly powerful message about ageing, legacy and the bonds between parent and child. It's a bit uneven, but The Last Journey has heart to spare – and plenty of charm. ★★★☆☆ 3 SPACE and sentimentality are the linchpins of Disney and Pixar's latest animated adventure which encourages you to dream big. Sci-fi obsessed Elio Solis (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a cape-wearing cosmic obsessive adopted by his Aunt Olga after his parents pass away. When extraterrestrials make contact, Elio doesn't hesitate to respond, and before you can say 'Martian' he's beamed up to a kind of cosmic UN Committee from various galaxies, including Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). They believe he's the leader back on Earth and Elio doesn't correct them. He's soon tasked with negotiating an alien peace treaty with baddie Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), but this quickly turns into a journey of self-discovery as, along with new wiggly best friend Glordon (a cutesy Remy Edgerly), our hero realises what really matters to him. Reminding us that there's no place like home, there's many Wizard Of Oz homages here, as we transport through solar systems and scary villains. Intergalactic, nourishing, family fun. There's a cameo from JLS singer Aston Merrygold too.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
When does '28 Years Later' come to theaters?
Are you ready zombie fans? Grab something to take out brains. The third installment of the popular 2002 British horror film, "28 Days Later" is set to hit theaters in the United States. The post-apocalyptic film dubbed "28 Years Later" is directed by Academy Award-winning British producer Danny Boyle, known for his work on movies including "The Beach", "Sunshine", and "Slumdog Millionaire." The movie comes after 2007's '28 Weeks Later,' and it will be followed by director Nia DaCosta's '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' set to hit theaters on Jan. 16, 2026. 'Obviously, 28 years is quite a compressed amount of time for evolution to really establish itself. But they are evolving just like humans evolve," Boyle previously told USA TODAY. But when does "28 Years Later" come out in theaters? Here's what to know about the upcoming film including its debut date in the U.S., its cast and where to stream the first film before the sequel hits theaters: The latest film, "28 Years Later" is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on Friday, June 20. The newest installment in the horror series premiered in Asia and Europe on June 17-19. A' compassionate' side of horror": How the sequel '28 Years Later' shows empathy Horror fans can stream the series' first film, "28 Days Later" on the free (with ads) streaming platform Pluto TV. Dunnnn-dunn... 50 years ago, 'Jaws' scared us senseless. We never got over it. There are three movies in the "28 Days Later" series. They are: "28 Days Later" "28 Weeks Later" "28 Years Later" The film stars the following actors and the character they play: Jodie Comer (Isla) Ralph Fiennes (Dr. Ian Kelson) Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Jamie) Evin Ryding (Erik Sundqvist) Erin Kellyman (Jimmy Ink) Alfie Williams (Spike) Jack O'Connell (Sir Jimmy Crystal) Chi Lewis-Parry (Alpha) Emma Laird (Jimmima) Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@ and follow her on X @nataliealund. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: When does '28 Years Later' come out in theaters?
Al Arabiya
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Al Arabiya
Movie Review: In '28 Years Later,' a Zombie Pandemic Rages On
Most movies are lucky to predict one thing. Danny Boyle's 2002 dystopian thriller '28 Days Later' managed to be on the cutting edge of two trends–albeit rather disparate ones: global pandemic and fleet-footed zombies. Add in Cillian Murphy, who had his breakout role in that film, and '28 Days Later' was unusually prognostic. While many of us were following the beginnings of the Afghanistan War and 'American Idol,' Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were probing the fragile fabric of society and the potentially very quick way, indeed, horror might come our way. Boyle always maintained that his undead–a far speedier variety of the slow-stepping monsters of George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead'–weren't zombies at all but were simply the infected. In that film and its 2007 sequel '28 Weeks Later' (which Juan Carlos Fresnadillo helmed), the filmmakers have followed the fallout of the so-called rage virus, which emptied London in the first film and brought soon-dashed hopes of the virus' eradication in the second movie. Like the virus, the '28 Days Later' franchise has proven tough to beat back. In the new '28 Years Later,' Boyle and Garland return to their apocalyptic pandemic with the benefit of now having lived through one. But recent history plays a surprisingly minor role in this far-from-typical, willfully shambolic, intensely scattershot part three. The usual trend of franchises is to progressively add gloss and scale. But where other franchises might have gone global, '28 Years Later' has remained in the UK, now a quarantine region where the infected roam free and survivors–or at least the ones we follow–cluster on an island off the northeast of Britain connected to mainland by only a stone causeway that dips below the water at high tide. Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who innovatively employed digital video in '28 Days Later,' have also turned to iPhones to shoot the majority of the film. Boyle, the 'Slumdog Millionaire' 'Trainspotting' filmmaker, is an especially frenetic director to begin with, but '28 Years Later' is frequently, gratingly disjointed. It's a visual approach that, taken with the story's tonal extremes, makes '28 Years Later' an often bumpy ride. But even when Boyle's film struggles to put the pieces together, there's an admirable resistance to being anything like a cardboard cutout summer movie. The recent event that hovers over '28 Years Later' is less the COVID-19 pandemic than Brexit. With the virus quarantined on Britain, the country has been severed from the European continent. On the secluded Holy Island, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams, a newcomer with some sweetness and pluck) lives with his hunter father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and bedridden mother, Isla (Jodie Comer). The scene, with makeshift watchtowers and bows and arrows for weapons, is almost medieval. Jamie, too, feels almost like a knight eager to induct his son into the village's ways of survival. On Spike's first trip out off the island, his father–nauseatingly jocular–helps him kill his first infected. Back inside the village walls, Jamie celebrates their near scrapes and exaggerates his son's coolness under pressure. Other developments cause Spike to question the macho world he's being raised in. 'They're all lyin', Mum,' he says to his mother. After hearing of a far-off, supposedly deranged doctor whose constant fires mystify the townspeople, Spike resolves to take his mother to him in hopes of healing her unknown illness. Their encounters along the way are colorful. Ralph Fiennes plays the doctor, orange-colored when they encounter him; Edvin Ryding plays a Swedish NATO soldier whose patrol boat crashed offshore. Meanwhile, Comer is almost comically delusional, frequently calling her son 'Daddy.' And the infected? One development here is that while some remain Olympic-worthy sprinters, other slothful ones, nicknamed 'Slow-Lows,' crawl around on the ground rummaging for worms. Buried in here are some tender reflections on mortality and misguided exceptionalism, and even the hint of those ideas makes '28 Years Later' a more thoughtful movie than you're likely to find at the multiplex this time of year. This is an unusually soulful coming-of-age movie considering the number of spinal cords that get ripped right out of bodies. It's enough to make you admire the stubborn persistence of Boyle in these films, which he's already extending. The already-shot '28 Days Later: The Bone Temple' is coming next, near from director Nia DaCosta, while Boyle hopes '28 Years Later' is the start of trilogy. Infection and rage, it turns out, are just too well suited to our times to stop now. '28 Years Later,' a Sony Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong bloody violence, grisly images, graphic nudity, language and brief sexuality. Running time: 115 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Danny Boyle Teases '28 Years Later': The Return of Cillian Murphy, the Evolution of the Infected, and Two More Sequels
Danny Boyle is having a little bit of trouble with all of this. Mostly, he wants to tell us everything about his upcoming '28 Years Later,' the much-anticipated third film in his gory, juicy, and beloved zombie series, but a few things keep him from spilling his guts. Mostly, that this writer and interviewer has only seen a sliver of the film in question (the first 28 minutes, naturally), as the full film was not available to press on the occasion of our interview. But even with those 28 minutes, there's plenty to chew on. The third film in the series, following Boyle's 2002 smash hit '28 Days Later' and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 2007 sequel '28 Weeks Later,' stars Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes, and was written by Alex Garland (who also wrote the first film). And, yes, it picks up 28 years after the outbreak of the Rage virus, which destroyed the modern UK, sent scads of bloodthirsty zombies all over the British Isles, and essentially resurrected the genre for modern audiences. More from IndieWire 'Ready or Not 2: Here I Come' Lands April 2026 Release Date Sonja O'Hara Has a Queer Existential Crisis After Taking Shrooms with Her Toxic Ex in 'Snare' Teaser Despite Boyle's delightful chagrin at not being able to open up about everything, there is plenty we already know, including that the film's sequel, '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,' was shot concurrently with this one and will be released in January. That one is directed by Nia DaCosta, and will include plenty of crossover casting, including Taylor-Johnson and Jack O'Connell, who appears at the end of Boyle's entry. And, yes, there is still one more planned sequel to come (and that's the one Cillian Murphy fans should be getting most pumped about). As for what we can share of the new film? It opens on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, Northumberland, which is home to a close-knit community of human survivors (including Williams, Comer, and Taylor-Johnson's characters) who have managed to stay safe in the intervening years, even as they've had to fall back on very old ways of living. One such way? Teaching their young men to be fierce warriors (for fans of Rudyard Kipling's war poem 'Boots,' get ready), including Williams' Spike, who is only 12, but has been granted permission to head back to the mainland with his father (Taylor-Johnson's Jamie) to make his first kill of an infected. While the community is thrilled for Spike, his mother Isla (Comer) is terrified. When we meet her, she's bedridden, haunted, and clearly unwell, and the news that Spike is heading out among the infected seems to rattle her in new ways. As Jamie and Spike reach the mainland, they soon meet different kinds of infected (which Boyle details below), come across a horribly mutilated man (does the word 'Jim' mean anything to you?), and discover new horrors that will likely terrify if the most hardened '28 Days' fans. Ahead, Boyle teases what's to come in both '28 Years Later' and '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,' sets the stage for the unnamed fifth film in franchise, promises plenty more Cillian Murphy, traces the icky (and fascinating) evolution of the infected, and gives us a taste at the technological advances that have always set these films apart. And, never fear, we will have much more with Boyle in the coming days and after we're able to see the full film. The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. Danny Boyle: See, the weird thing about showing 28 minutes of it is, obviously I don't know how to talk to you, because I think, 'What's she seeing? What's she not seeing?' I'm not meant to give away what happens in the second half because… [Long pause] It is a great story, and I can understand then… [Another pause] Well, I don't really understand it. But anyway, there you go. IndieWire: Well, I still have plenty of questions from just those 28 minutes. Yeah, go for it! A third film in the series has been talked about for so long, was there any point where you really thought, 'This is not going to happen'? We flirted with it [for a long time] — that's me and Alex [Garland] — because it was clear that it had sustained its popularity. Not only the original film, but obviously the stuff like that that builds on the popularity of the idea. We always used to joke that we wish we'd got a percentage of 'The Walking Dead' and 'The Last of Us' and all this kind of stuff. But we'd talk about an idea, and then we did produce an idea. Alex did write a script, which was a weaponize-the-virus script. It's literally the 'Alien' idea, which is that a corporation, a military, a government, whatever, want to weaponize the virus, and that's how it stays alive and comes alive again through that process. Any script by Alex is a good script. It's a decent script, but neither of us were very… You could tell we just were, 'Yeah, it's good.' And whereas when you do something, it's different. Suddenly, you start talking about what you'd do with it. So we went away, and then he came back with a much bigger idea, and the idea was to withdraw from Europe and to isolate the island. Much like the first film, I think [we] probably [had some] regrets about threatening Europe with it, in terms of story development, that meant it could only go one way. So, the idea was to retrench, and that allowed us to make weirdly a much bigger film, more mythic. And it spread across three films, and two of which we've shot, all of which connect characters ultimately, which is how Cillian eventually appears. He's executive producer on this one, and of course, we were shameless, and he was understandably in approval about this, about using his name to try and get the financing and saying, 'You go with his story package, and you'll eventually meet Cillian, and it will become his film.' And straightaway, as soon as we started discussing it like that, it just had a degree of invention that was much greater than the weaponized idea. It was much more character-committed, because it was built on the scaffolding of these characters. You didn't get to see Ralph's character in your 28 minutes, but he's a big character in this one and becomes a huge character in the second one. And Jack O'Connell, who's right at the end of this film, becomes a huge character in the second film. And Alfie goes through [both films]. So at what point do you and Alex go from 'we have this idea we love' to 'we have this idea we love, and it's films'? Weirdly, when we did 'Sunshine,' I remember he outlined two further films. So, the trilogy idea was there on 'Sunshine,' but they were really epic, planetary films. The plan was there from the beginning, and the outlines were there across the three films. They got shorter as they went on, but they were there. He wrote the first script and the second script very closely together. And we knew we had to shoot them back-to-back for financial reasons and actor reasons and all those sorts of things that made a little sense to do it back-to-back. I couldn't do them back-to-back, so we got Nia DaCosta to do the second one, which was good because if there is a criticism I'd make of us, it's quite a boys' club, and it was good to break that up. And she breaks that up because she's her own person, Nia. She's a lovely, charming woman and everything like that, but she knows what she wants, and she sticks to it. At the end of '28 Years Later,' how primed do you think audiences will be for what we'll see in 'The Bone Temple'? How obvious will the setup be? There's a setup that's significant. What can I say? I can't really say anything. It's not sequel-based. It's not like, oh, the story hasn't finished. Not 'I saw half a film'? Yeah, it's not that. The film is complete, and then you get this little tail that appears that's, oh, God. Anyway, we'll see what people think of it. It is different. It is also a different title setup. '28 Year Later: The Bone Temple.' What discussions went into that? Well, the idea was always to use the 28, obviously, and the '28 Years Later' as the indicative title, as not just as a title, but indicative of the story element and to use. Oh, again, you haven't seen this, but we do use the original title again later [in '28 Years Later'] for the reasons that you'll see when you see it. [There's a location move], it's a geographical… You'll have seen from the trailer what the Bone Temple is, and they put it on the poster now. But what the Bone Temple is very important to the heart of the film, really. You guys haven't shot what will be the third film of this trilogy within the series. What can you share? It doesn't take a genius to work out there's going to be a big role for Cillian Murphy in it. Yeah, a significant role. All I can say, because I know the idea of the story, which has been mapped out, it is clever. It is a very smart use of him. There is a very satisfying introduction of him in the second film, and when I saw it, the way [Nia had] done it, I was like, 'Oh, yeah, that's pretty good.' Because I've seen a rough cut of it. They're doing a test of it in July. The whole Sony Corporation hasn't turned its attention to that film yet. I remember asking Nia [about this new trilogy], 'What do you think it's about?' It won't necessarily end up being about this because films change, but I said, 'What do you think it's about?' And she said, 'Well, I think the first one is about the nature of family. The second one's about the nature of evil. And the third one is about the nature of redemption.' That's our ambition. It is ambitious, and it's going to be set in England, and there aren't going to be American soldiers arriving to save it, because we know you're not sending American soldiers anywhere anymore. It's going to be a homeland-made and executed and completed, really. It's a big story, but about these characters who are much as they were in the first film. Cillian is playing the same character. He will be playing the same character. And, as you've seen, the characters are Jodie and Aaron and eventually Ralph in this film and Jack right at the very end. Let's talk more about this one. We did get a look at how some of the infected have evolved and devolved; in those first 28 minutes, we do see two different kinds. What are these ideas that you and Alex throw around about who they are, what they look like, how they move? There is a lot of connected tissue with the first film, and some of it is literal. You see some infected and they look similar-ish. They behave similar-ish. But we did think, hang on, 28 years of that, how have they survived? They are burning up so much energy that they will just evaporate. And we showed them at the end of the first film starving to death. And there's a guy even in the ['28 Years Later'] trailer who appears later in the film, who's emaciated on the point of death. They have learned to feed. So, it's learned. It's evolutionary behavior. They are hunting in a way. The last shot that you saw with them on the horizon, they're a pack and there appears to be a leader. So, the behavior patterns are evolving. We thought that there would be some that would go that way, and they're eating. Just like in the wild, we started as hunter-gatherers; we'd have been out there doing exactly the same thing, killing meat. Meat gets you growing. We thought there'd be others that went the other way. It's just that they reduced their energy. They became very passive and just ate grubs in the ground and just became part of the land in a way. As Aaron's character says, 'That's not to say they're not dangerous, but they are passive, and they're easy kills because they're slow.' We call them the slow-lows. And there were an amazing bunch of actors who came in for that. The virus itself has adapted, and its hosts, the humans who carry it, are changing with it. I think the authorities quarantine the island, isolate it, lock it down, and imagine that it will burn itself out. And it doesn't. Nature won't do that. Ebola does that, apparently. That's one of the ways that we haven't all died of Ebola because when it breaks out in remote villages. It is so virulent that it hasn't got time to spread. It literally just burns itself out. But this one doesn't, and it's learned that its hosts can have behavioral changes, which influences the rest of the story. And you see elements of that in 'The Bone Temple' as well. It grew out of the idea that they expended so much energy, they would just burn out. There'd be none of them left. That's hinted at in '28 Days Later,' that they're all going to die out and we'll be fine. That's not how this works. At the beginning, you think, oh, it isn't just like the first film where everyone's like, 'Are they infected? Are they not?' It's a key question, but people have become, not blasé, but they become more accustomed to the danger so that they learn how they can flex and still stay safe like we all did with COVID, just the same. Let's talk about the people we meet, including Aaron, Jodie, and Alfie's characters and community. They're a nostalgic society. They look backwards. They do not look forwards. The death of technology and of electricity has made them go [back], they haven't substituted evolution. They look back to the '50s when there wasn't the same technology, and they're nostalgic for an older England and bows and arrows and Henry V, and the boys go out to fight and the girls tend the home and all that kind of stuff. And the sick, you put them in the bedroom upstairs. There's nothing you can do for them. You mentioned COVID. As you and Alex write the scripts, and look at this crazy thing that has just happened in the real world, what ideas end up in the films? Yeah, some of it's deliberate, but most of it is, not unconscious, but you're aware that the real world will end up in there just inevitably. There's more of that later. They're not political films, but they do reflect the circumstances. One of the things that had happened in Britain since we made the first film is Brexit, [where] we have chosen this isolation. And it's nostalgic as well. And it's nationalism. It's nationalism. It's thinking we could be great again, we were great, and we could be great again. And you go, 'Guys, we are slowly all the time, with setbacks, sure, we are becoming great.' Our evolutionary destiny is that we keep improving a little bit, a little bit. Medicine, science keeps improving. Civil rights keep improving. Society generally moves forward. Yes, there are setbacks, there are lunatics who set you back, but the grand arc— —the moral arc of the universe— —bends towards justice. And it does, really. And they back away from that. Brexit backed away from that. That's effectively in the film. Let's talk about the technology you used here. Oh, the tech! Sony are desperate for me to talk about the tech. Well, before we talk about the new technology, when you look back at '28 Days Later' and the way that it looks now and the way that it makes you feel now, how do you reflect on that? If someone had told you back then, 'You'll shoot one of these with phones,' what would you have even thought? When I did the Steve Jobs film, I did this research, and I remember either he said this or somebody said this about him, that when they invented the television, it took 50 or 70 years for it to reach a billion people, and when he invented the smartphone, it took five years for it to reach three billion people. So, how anyone could have predicted that? You couldn't really. One of the factors in us doing this again was I went to a screening at the BFI of '28 Days Later' two, three years ago, and they said, 'Would you come along and do a Q&A?' And I said, 'Of course.' I went to it, and I watched the last 20 minutes of it. I sneaked in the back and watched it. I was shocked. It was packed. And the BFI is not a natural home for a film like '28 Days Later.' It's a mainstream film. It's not really an auteur film like the BFI tend to program, but it was packed, and they were rabid for it. I was shocked how violent it was, and I was very proud of how visceral it was, and I thought, 'Yeah, we did the right thing.' Using those cameras that we did, I felt very liberated by using them for that kind of story because it wasn't trying to mimic big, American action movies, and yet it turned out to appeal to big American action movie fans. I was very proud of that, and I wanted some of this to have an element of that again, but it would be obtuse to use that low grade of technology now when 4K is available on all our phones. You only have to switch it on in your settings, and you can have cinema-quality recordings. So, we wanted to use that technology. It's very light, it's cheap, and it allowed us to go to places that were very remote and bore very little evidence of human presence for many, many, many years. Northumbria, where we shot, is an ancient area of the North East. It's not agriculturalized. We use drones. There's very inventive use of drones in it. I think you saw the Red footage; that's this Panasonic camera. So, there's lots of different cameras as well. Sony are desperate for us to say, 'Don't let everybody say it's just shot on the iPhone.' It isn't just shot on the iPhone, but it is a huge advantage because it allowed us to do these rigs that they've now released footage of. It was lovely to be able to use that, and it's flexible; it's a poor man's bullet time. It's basically 'The Matrix' rig, but flexible and portable, and you can park it in different places. It's an easy technology to switch on. It's a bit of a nightmare for syncing and all that kind of stuff in post, but it's a beautiful thing to use. Rewatching '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later,' the virus being called the virus, it does hit a little differently now. We have such a different sense of 'rage' as a concept. I know. I met this guy and he talked to, maybe it was Stephen Fry or somebody like that, somebody really bright who'd said, 'It's a bit like the old days when the trains used to stop at all the different stations, and there were all these different places you could get off, like frustrated, annoyed, all these different places you could get off before you got to full absolute loss of temper. But now, we go direct to it. There's no stops on the way. You just go from zero to it straight away, and we're all there straight away.' People blame these things for it [points at our iPhones], the empowerment, the fake empowerment, it gives to people's senses of people. But I think you've got to be honest, and I think we all realize now, we're all capable of it. We're all there. It's not some alien thing that these horrible people have and we don't. We're all capable of it, and God help us, really. We've somehow engineered its arrival, its instant arrival, rather than some of the safeguards that used to deflate it or prevent it, or you could get off a stop earlier. The Rage virus, there you go. Sony Pictures will release '28 Years Later' in theaters on Friday, June 20. Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
Associated Press
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Movie Review: In '28 Years Later,' a zombie pandemic rages on
Most movies are lucky to predict one thing. Danny Boyle's 2002 dystopian thriller '28 Days Later' managed to be on the cutting edge of two trends, albeit rather disparate ones: global pandemic and fleet-footed zombies. Add in Cillian Murphy, who had his breakout role in that film, and '28 Days Later' was unusually prognostic. While many of us were following the beginnings of the Afghanistan War and 'American Idol,' Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were probing the the fragile fabric of society, and the potentially very quick way, indeed, horror might come our way. Boyle always maintained that his undead — a far speedier variety of the slow-stepping monsters of George A. Romero's 'The Night of Living Dad' — weren't zombies, at all, but were simply the infected. In that film, and its 2007 sequel '28 Weeks Later' (which Juan Carlos Fresnadillo helmed), the filmmakers have followed the fallout of the so-called rage virus, which emptied London in the first film and brought soon-dashed hopes of the virus' eradication in the second movie. Like the virus, the '28 Days Later' franchise has proven tough to beat back. In the new '28 Years Later,' Boyle and Garland return to their apocalyptic pandemic with the benefit of now having lived through one. But recent history plays a surprisingly minor role in this far-from-typical, willfully shambolic, intensely scattershot part three. The usual trend of franchises is to progressively add gloss and scale. But where other franchises might have gone global, '28 Years Later' has remained in the U.K., now a quarantine region where the infected roam free and survivors — or at least the ones we follow — cluster on an island off the northeast of Britain, connected to mainland by only a stone causeway that dips below the water at high tide. Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who innovatively employed digital video in '28 Days Later,' have also turned to iPhones to shoot the majority of the film. Boyle, the 'Slumdog Millionaire,' 'Trainspotting' filmmaker, is an especially frenetic director to begin with, but '28 Years Later' is frequently gratingly disjointed. It's a visual approach that, taken with the story's tonal extremes, makes '28 Years Later' an often bumpy ride. But even when Boyle's film struggles to put the pieces together, there's an admirable resistance to being anything like a cardboard cutout summer movie. The recent event that hovers over '28 Years Later' is less the COVID-19 pandemic than Brexit. With the virus quarantined on Britain, the country has been severed from the European continent. On the secluded Holy Island, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams, a newcomer with some sweetness and pluck) lives with his hunter father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and bedridden mother, Isla (Jodie Comer). The scene, with makeshift watchtowers and bows and arrows for weapons, is almost medieval. Jamie, too, feels almost like a knight eager to induct his son into the village's ways of survival. On Spike's first trip out off the island, his father — nauseatingly jocular — helps him kill his first infected. Back inside the village walls, Jamie celebrates their near scrapes and exaggerates his son's coolness under pressure. Other developments cause Spike to question the macho world he's being raised in. 'They're all lyin', mum,' he says to his mother. After hearing of a far-off, supposedly deranged doctor whose constant fires mystify the townspeople, Spike resolves to take his mother to him in hopes of healing her unknown illness. Their encounters along the way are colorful. Ralph Fiennes plays the doctor, orange-colored when they encounter him; Edvin Ryding plays a Swedish NATO soldier whose patrol boat crashed offshore. Meanwhile, Comer is almost comically delusional, frequently calling her son 'Daddy.' And the infected? One development here is that, while some remain Olympic-worthy sprinters, other slothful ones nicknamed 'Slow-Lows' crawl around on the ground, rummaging for worms. Buried in here are some tender reflections on mortality and misguided exceptionalism, and even the hint of those ideas make '28 Years Later' a more thoughtful movie than you're likely to find at the multiplex this time of year. This is an unusually soulful coming-of-age movie considering the number of spinal cords that get ripped right of bodies. It's enough to make you admire the stubborn persistence of Boyle in these films, which he's already extending. The already-shot '28 Days Later: The Bone Temple' is coming next near, from director Nia DaCosta, while Boyle hopes '28 Years Later' is the start of trilogy. Infection and rage, it turns out, are just too well suited to our times to stop now. '28 Years Later,' a Sony Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong bloody violence, grisly images, graphic nudity, language and brief sexuality. Running time: 115 minutes. Two stars out of four.
