Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his unforgettable horror movie of (actually) 23 years ago once again taps into the “being chased” nightmare that we have all had.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the hunter gatherer father to the film’s 12-year-old hero Spike (an excellent Alfie Williams). They live in a primitive community on an island separated from the infected British mainland by a tidal causeway and defended by medieval gates. Spike’s mother Isla (Jodie Cromer) is ill and bedbound.
When Spike hears of a sinister doctor on the mainland who might be able to help his mother he resolves against all his community’s laws to take her to him. With Britain’s surviving communities living a primitive subsistence life, and with this septic isle now quarantined by a Europe that has managed to extinguish the “rage virus” on its lands, it is impossible not to wonder if Boyle is making a commentary on Brexit.
But the cleverness of the movie is that it flips our national psychology on its head. The sea that surrounds the British Isles no longer protects us from those on the continent. It now protects them from us.
The zombies, meanwhile, are as terrifying as ever and a late pivotal role by Ralph Fiennes as the doctor who Spike seeks harks powerfully back to our primeval past.
I don’t like horror movies as a rule. They scare me. But if you see one make it 28 Years Later.
Certificate:15
