28 Years Later (2025)

Plot of 28 Years Later: We may remember in the original film, 28 Days Later, the population is infected with what is known as the ‘Rage Virus’, which has escaped from a military facility. Now, 28 years later, Europe is safe and the United Kingdom has been abandoned to the infected and is quarantined, the sea lanes patrolled by naval vessels. But at least one community survives on the island of Lindisfarne, close to the coast of Northumberland and connected to the mainland by a causeway submerged at high tide. The inhabitants have  rite of passage, fathers taking their sons to the mainland where they will kill the infected. So it is that Jamie takes his son Spike into Northumberland where they kill infected with arrows and find the head of a deer, ripped off by  an ‘Alpha’ a bigger and smarter zombie. The Alpha gets on their trail and they just manage to get back to the island. But Spike has seen a fire operated, apparently, by a mad doctor, and determines that he will take his mother to him, since she is suffering from an undefined illness. So he distracts the guards from the gate and off they go, to face new threats and possibly new outcomes.

Content: Just a bit of sex without nudity. Some drinking. The infected are always naked and often emaciated, and the nudity of the Alphas is pretty graphic. The film opens in scenes from the original infestation, where a single boy survives an attack. But now the people of the island are particularly skilled in the use of the long bow, so faced with the naked horde they fire arrows often through the heads of the zombies with much blood. There are mutants, very fat infected crawl over the ground eating worms, and the Alphas seem to be immortal. At one point they are helped by a Danish soldier, Erik, who has a machine gun, but his head is ripped off by an Alpha. This while Isla, Spike’s mother is helping an infected to give birth to an uninfected baby. And just a bit of a spoiler Spike, Isla and the baby make it to the doctor’s camp where he boils the flesh off the dead to make monuments with their skulls and bones.

A View: It is notable that British critics generally gave the film five stars, but that the American critics were less enthusiastic. I was quite entertained by the Geordie references, including the singing of “Bladen Races”. How many people would actually register this I wonder, and just for those who don’t know Lindisfarne is a island off the coast of UK north of Newcastle, the inhabitants of which are Geordies. I was constantly troubled by the numbers of emaciated infected dashing about. How had they survived? But there is no doubt that the film is absorbing. When my wife and I emerged into the Spanish sunlight after it was over, it took us a moment or two to adjust.

Fun Fact: Any men in the audience who have feelings of inadequacy after viewing full frontal Alphas can be reassured. They are wearing prosthetic genitalia.