28 Years Later takes us back to the bleak dystopian world envisioned by director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and writer Alex Garland (Civil War), nearly three decades after the events of the first film. The world the filmmakers created has certainly evolved in that time – and not for the better. “The Infected” are taking on new and unpredictable forms, including the dreaded “Alpha” (Chi Lewis-Parry), a hyper-strong and seemingly cunning leader of the zombie pack. 28 Years Later conveys with thrilling certainty that the Alpha is a nightmare-fuel game-changer for the franchise, and arguably zombie movies as a genre. And there’s one aspect of the fearsome villain that’s grabbing headlines: his unbridled nudity!
Videos by ComicBook.com
Yes, “Samson,” the Alpha zombie of 28 Years Later, is generating quite a bit of buzz for the equally alpha-sized member he has dangling between his legs for most of 28 Years Later. It’s almost becoming a character in and of itself.
To save you any potentially embarrassing Google searches: no, that thing is not real. In fact, Danny Boyle made it very clear in his interview with ComicBook.com that due to the nature of the cast (specifically young lead actor Alfie Williams), no real private parts could be on display while filming, legally. That left Boyle and his crew having to overcome the technical challenge of finding prosthetics to give Samson and other members of the infected anatomical accuracy while being functional in the action moments.
As Boyle explains: “This was a salutory moment via our intimacy coordinator that when you have a child of 12 present, all genitals, male and female, have to be fake. They can’t be real. [The] Child Sex Offenses Act would put me in prison if I allowed him [Alfie] to see real genitals [laughs]. So he has to look at absolutely false photo-real genitals, created by a prosthetics company.”
The rules of child labor remain strange and nuanced as ever, huh?
Funny enough, the sheer amount of frontal male nudity in 28 Years Later is still somehow some of the least odd or disturbing content in the film. As you can read in our review (below), Boyle and Garland fully lean into the dark imaginings of what a dystopian world becomes, decades after the apocalypse.
28 Years Later is now in theaters. The story of the film is set “almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.” You can check out our review below.
“
