The makers of 2002’s 28 Days Later and 2007’s 28 Weeks Later have skipped right over the “Months” movie and gone straight to 28 Years Later. It’s set that many years after the UK was ravaged by the “rage virus” that turned its victims into zombie-like, mindlessly homicidal marauders. The Sceptred Isle is under quarantine, and civilization there has collapsed.
The new film follows the adventures of Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old boy living in a community on an island connected by a causeway to the English mainland during low tide. People live in the fortified town there, practicing agriculture and fishing and conserving their resources and living with dignity as best they can.
They occasionally make sorties to the mainland to scavenge and to kill the “Infected” that still live there, scrounging for earthworms and shrieking like monkeys when they see any uninfected. Some of them seem to have evolved into brawny, bearded giants, like movie cavemen.
Spike makes his first trip across the causeway with his confident father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), both of them armed with bows and arrows. During his hair-raising visit, he sees a fire in the distance and later learns that it may be the encampment of a doctor. Convinced that his ill, increasingly foggy mother Isla (Jodie Comer) needs this doctor’s services, Spike makes an unauthorized return to the mainland, with his Mom in tow. All does not go smoothly.
Directed, like the first film, by Danny Boyle, and written, like the first film, by Alex Garland, this is one grim, bleak, gory shocker. But it isn’t the oppressive downer that it might sound like from that description. Boyle’s wound-up, jumpy, headlong style jangles the nerves, but it also keeps us awake and invested. The imagery evokes sources from the original Night of the Living Dead to Kurosawa, and the atmosphere sometimes recalls that of ’70s Brit horrors in isolated island settings like The Wicker Man.
It also has an emotional dimension that its predecessors weren’t even trying for. It isn’t just a horror picture; it’s a coming-of-age story, and Williams makes a splendid young everyman hero. All of the actors are excellent, including Ralph Fiennes, who shows up near the end, and gives the picture a very welcome boost in its homestretch.
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Times being what they are, audiences may sympathize with the desire of Elio‘s title character to be abducted by aliens. Voiced by Yonas Kibreab, our hero is an orphaned kid, being raised by his Air Force Major Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). In the evenings, Elio lies on the beach with ham radio equipment, attempting to flag down any passing extraterrestrials who might want to spirit him off.
Suffice to say he eventually succeeds, getting himself transported to the “Communiverse,” a sort of interstellar United Nations staffed by good-natured aliens of all shapes and sizes. In the course of trying to get himself appointed an ambassador – the aliens think he’s a high official on Earth – he makes friends with a tardigrade-like creature, Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and incurs the wrath of Glordon’s menacing warrior father (Brad Garrett).
Like 28 Years Later, this animated feature, made by a gaggle of Pixar geniuses, is a coming-of-age story. The sci-fi content is colorful and imaginative; the strand involving a clone that takes Elio’s place for a while is simultaneously funny and freaky, and Glordon is endearing. Above all, I liked that Elio isn’t too perfect. He’s kind of a reckless pain; you feel for Olga’s exasperation with him, even as you can see he’s basically a good-hearted kid.
