28 Years Later, the zombie movie directed by Danny Boyle(Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire) and written by Alex Garland(Ex Machina, Warfare, Civil War), hits theaters this Friday, June 20.
We were able to see it early, and we recommend that all moviegoers get to the cinema as soon as possible, because Danny Boyle’s cinema is at its best in this film, which far exceeded our expectations.
28 Years Later…
Set 28 years after the rabies virus devastated Britain, the film largely follows Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old member of a small colony living on a peninsula connected to land when the sea is low.
He leaves the colony with his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and stumbles upon secrets that will compel him to return and seek answers. We won’t tell you any more, because whatever you think you’re going to see in this film, it’s going to be completely different.
28 Years Later is an exhilarating return to great British cinema , and a consecration of the immense talent of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland.
It’s in a very specific category; somewhere between a gentle, human family drama, which is at the heart of the film, and a completely fly-on-the-wall action movie with lots of characters intertwined in complete chaos, bittersweet jokes and a loving critique of the pop-culture of the last 30 years. And, lest we forget, zombies and the gore that goes with them.
The film’s structure is well organized – but highly unpredictable. 28 Years Later presents the rambling wanderings of humans in a semi-apocalyptic world (reminiscent of the pandemic), with a memento mori far more sentimental than the “classic” zombie film, and with an almost prehistoric violence – profoundly human. It’s an inside, outside look, and it’s 2 hours we didn’t see go by.
Danny Boyle’s visual language has been known, since Trainspotting (1996), to be explosive, bizarre, colorful and incredibly effective. And, for this film, you can tell he had a lot of fun…
Much of the film, according to IMDb, was shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max cameras, equipped with Atlas Mercury lenses mounted on half-moon rigs to capture a multitude of angles of a single movement. We’ve seen some of the footage, and we believe it, because the texture and variety of shots in the film give it a homemade quality that transforms this blockbuster (it’s safe to say, it’s a Sony Studios film) into a human-sized cinematography -much more exciting and touching.
Danny Boyle mixes elements to create a cinematic language that speaks to the 21st century, in the vein of Michel Gondry’s music videos for Björk.
In addition to Rudyard Kipling’s chilling poem Boots, read by Taylor Holmes, which can be heard in the film’s trailer, Boyle uses archival footage, flashbulbs, aggressive pop, flashbacks and proto-subliminal images to create an atmosphere in which, no matter how scared we are of the infected, we want to spend as much time as possible.
The film ends with a scene that calls for a sequel, and in the meantime we’ll be going back to see the film several times over, because the world Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have created has, if we already adored it in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, a flavor that’s completely addictive.
Great movie!
and to organize the rest of June, we have a summer Bucket List here!