Review: 28 YEARS LATER is Cinematic Anarchy That Yields Mixed Results

28 Years Later is an act of cinematic anarchy: a compliment and a criticism. Danny Boyle's return to his rage-fueled horror franchise is so overtly the first movie in a planned trilogy, planting storytelling seeds but barely watering them. It's desperately averse to being another straightforward 28 [Insert Time Duration] sequel, yet is missing the rabid intensity witnessed prior. Never did I presume 28 Years Later would have more in common with House of the Dead, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, or The Warriors than 28 Days Later, but here we are—and I'm torn.

The lynchpin to 28 Years Later's cast is young Alfie Williams, who stars as a 12-year-old survivor in the Scottish Highlands, Spike. The first act features Spike accompanying his scavenger father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), as they leave their island and head to the "Mainland," where he undergoes a ritual of maturation by hunting infected monstrosities. Then Spike ventures out with his ailing mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), in hopes a reclusive doctor—Ralph Fiennes' fabled hermit Dr. Ian Kelson—can cure her condition. Everything is connected by Spike's coming-of-age trials in the quarantined U.K. wasteland, where the threat of infected individuals, having evolved unchecked, is always close behind.

Boyle and original writer Alex Garland are obsessed with primitive comparisons between survivor outposts and the feral infected hordes. Montages flash images of medieval archers juxtaposed against Jamie's community using the same weapons or nature footage that squeezes between blood-red washed clips of savage ragers tearing wildlife apart. 28 Years Later is an abundantly visual-forward movie that shows rather than tells, but these fast-paced music video interludes distract from the actual storytelling. It's as if Boyle has to make up for skipping 28 Months Later, so he speedruns through clip shows that give you the gist, but they're lacking substance. Not to say 28 Years Later is hard to follow, but it's the same problem Jurassic World: Dominion faced by ignoring integral development that took place off-screen after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle returns with a new bag of tricks, replacing digital camcorders with 20 iPhones arranged in a half-moon formation on a single rig. There's no question which scenes utilize the multi-angle invention because obscene, over-eager editing swaps between as many perspectives as possible. Boyle's avant-garde outbreak photography resembles a Uwe Boll video game in practice, revolving around infected kill shots as Jamie or Spike launch their arrows through squishy enemy heads (seriously, right from House of the Dead). Then, Dod returns to more traditional cinematic framing (à la Melancholia or Mad Max: Fury Road), and 28 Years Later becomes a gorgeous tapestry of aurora borealis neons reflecting off serene mirror-glass waters or a cyclone of embers swirling into the sky over calcified, pearly-white bone temples. From crudely and choppily recorded to Oscar-worthy in the blink of an eye.

Boyle's visual language is akin to Garland's Civil War, two movies where the camera pours over dystopian landscapes and yet finds fetching imagery in unexpected places. However, the horrors themselves play second fiddle, as infected populations have regained morsels of humanity. Musclebound Alphas can tear skulls and spinal columns from bodies cleaner than Yautja's from Predator, but 28 Years Later is about coexisting with civility. There are still frantic chase sequences and plenty of bursting water-balloon-like wounds every time arrowheads puncture targets, but Boyle's vastly more interested in the value of life and death in all earthly creatures, healthy or raged-up.

At its best, 28 Days Later is a reverential interpretation of "Memento mori," Latin for "remember, you must die." Spike and Isla's venture across dangerous territories is tenderly felt, with brief spots of levity once Edvin Ryding's dickish Swedish NATO soldier becomes their unwitting guard. Boyle isn't interested in zombie-adjacent scares by this point, digging into the preciousness of consciousness. Fiennes' Dr. Kelson is this intellectual who quotes literature and teaches Spike about the cruel inevitability of mortality, but does so with a healthy appreciation for the miracle of existence. It's more hopeful than 28 Days Later and more thoughtful than 28 Weeks Later, letting the mother-son subplot sing a soberingly sweet chorus.

The problem is that everything else feels piecemeal and incomplete. Within the two-hour experience, 28 Years Later can feel like a grab bag of antagonistic conflicts and rushed introductions. We spend time with characters we know will return in Nia DaCosta's upcoming 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and beyond, yet in some cases, not enough to justify their teases now. 28 Years Later is anchored to a few core plotlines, but it sounds like a Mad Lib given all the bouncing around that happens. Between skeletal architecture, the infected Jason Momoa lookalike hangin' dong, unexpected pregnancies, parkour tracksuit mafias, footraces down causeways, exposed cheaters, and a host of other tossed-in details, ambitions become a jumble of at-odds ideas vying for their own spotlight.

28 Years Later is a lawless continuation from Danny Boyle that ditches convention and regular franchise complacency. The problem is, in resisting the urge to replay formulaic rage virus hits, Boyle loses what made the first two entries so intimately frightening. Garland crams themes of religious delusion, primal survival, and coming-of-age lessons (among twenty other motivations) into his screenplay, but there's a lack of harmony in the way Boyle portions each exploration on screen. I'm simultaneously in awe of Boyle's fearlessness, stricken by Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography, and frustrated by both men's overcomplication of techniques. 28 Years Later is back with a vengeance, yet is off to a positive yet rocky start with two more releases on the horizon.

Movie Score: 3/5