28 YEARS LATER - THE TAKE-UP

MEMENTO AMORIS

“You were thinking that you’ll never hear another piece of original music ever again. You’ll never read another book that hasn’t already been written … or see a film that hasn’t already been shot.” This line from Selena (Naomi Harris) in 28 Days Later (2002) best captures the abstract terror that the film’s premise brings to the well-trodden genre of the zombie movie. Danny Boyle’s feature admittedly does wonders for revitalizing the superficial aspects of the subgenre (What if zombies … go fast?). Yet each moment throughout the film carries a listless dread, a weight that only becomes heavier as its characters reach each realization regarding the hopelessness of their situation. While other zombie movies often function as survival thrillers about prevailing amid endless hordes of the undead, 28 Days Later remains fixated on an aspect not often touched on, even in classics like Night of the Living Dead (1968): The Death of Culture.

The film’s dated 2002-isms – such as the ads seen in the empty streets of London and the low-def cinematography courtesy of consumer-grade Canon digital cameras – ultimately reinforce the story’s frozen-in-time qualities. For Great Britain, deemed a lost cause and quarantined indefinitely until the Rage virus burns itself out, 2002 was the last year the island was connected to the rest of the world. Its people would never experience new technology like smartphones or the countless new artists, musicians, filmmakers, and authors from other countries who have emerged in the past 20 years. Meanwhile, Britain’s native creators were either killed, infected, never born, or are too busy surviving to make the art they might have made elsewhere.

However, the truth is that culture can never die, it only shifts. For director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, the shift is both optimistic and ominous. In its title alone, 28 Years Later carries the same sense of dread as its predecessor, albeit for different reasons. Days featured the collapse of a once-functioning country; Years shows what the people who were left for dead have done with their despoiled homeland. Having been left to their own devices for almost 30 years since the outbreak of the Rage virus, the Brits have gone from a singular capitalistic society to several regressive, isolated communities. (Presumably, the Paris invasion seen at the conclusion of Juan Carles Fesnadillo’s 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, didn’t amount to much.)

Taking place in Lindisfarne, a remote island off the coast of Northumberland that can only be reached by a causeway during low tide, the film illustrates how a small group of people have managed to survive. The islanders live off the land much as their ancestors did, albeit with strict rationing (bacon has become a luxury only eaten on special occasions). Children are taught self-defense and obliged to choose the role (farmer, councilor, sentry, etc.) that they will pursue during adulthood. The only gate to the mainland is heavily guarded by townspeople armed with arrows, a ballista, and spotlights. They are understandably paranoid about the inevitable day that the Infected, now living as animalistic tribes in the deep forest on the mainland, will discover a way across the causeway.

This is the world that 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) has known all his life. Having never experienced Britain before the outbreak, the throwback existence of Lindisfarne is normal for the boy. This explains why his attitude toward his first trip to the mainland with his father – a coming-of-age ritual for which even the rest of the townsfolk deem him too young – is similar to any adolescent’s feelings about their first hunting trip. Over nearly three decades, the Infected have evolved into different types of horrors, such as the gigantic, well-hung alphas and obese, slow-moving crawlers. Yet Spike is less concerned about the potential dangers of coming face-to-face with such monsters than with impressing his dad, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

Together, father and son venture through the woods, practicing their skills in killing the Infected, and it is here that Boyle brings out the themes in Garland’s script. As they travel across the causeway, the Young Fathers’ anxiety-inducing score blends with a 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling’s war poem “Boots,” with editor Jon Harris splicing in battle footage from Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944). Whenever Jamie and Alfie slay an Infected, the death is depicted via a “poor man’s bullet time” involving a 20-iPhone rig, showing off every sick arrow through the head. Jamie speaks of the Infected the way a particularly callous hunter might refer to wild animals, ignoring the horrid fact that the creatures they are stalking used to be human.

While traveling, the pair come across a man-made bonfire, with Jamie expressing fear of the mysterious man who created this ever-raging inferno. They also observe far-off patrolling military boats from foreign nations, eager to destroy anyone who tries to escape Britain, Infected or otherwise. Eventually, Jamie and Spike become trapped on the mainland and hunted by a persistent alpha. However, this conflict – which could have lasted for the duration of a different sort of film – is quickly resolved. Here one realizes that this hunting trip is only the first act in something more subversive and heartfelt than one might expect from a zombie film. Never mind the film’s intense marketing campaign, which practically screamed, “Oh, it gets worse!” The dramatic questions seemingly posed by the film’s opening act – Does the island get overrun with Infected? Do father and son get separated? – are soon set aside for a coming-of-age tale about a child realizing that there is more to life than mere survival, in the best and worst ways.