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.
