Guys... I don't really know where to start discussing this movie... In its opening week it came second only after "How To Train Your Dragon" and debuted many millions of dollars (well deserved); the internet is teeming with heated discussions (especially about the end), and I feel like I didn't even know I've been waiting for this... On the day it was released in Germany I left work early so I could literally run to the theater and watch the first English showing. I've seen it twice more since then, and I'm still thinking about this movie and about going to see it one more time. Why? Because it's a movie where there's so so much going on, and despite their imperfections, or maybe because of them, I love movies likes that.
DON'T FORGET THAT I ALWAYS HAVE TO SPOIL EVERY MOVIE AND EVERY BOOK, SO PLEASE GO AND SEE THE MOVIE BEFORE READING THIS!!!
With this first installment of a new trilogy, which can also be seen as the closing of the first trilogy, director Danny Boyle leaves the science fictional roots of the 28 something saga which began with a group of animal rescuers liberating a bunch of monkeys deliberately infected with a variant of the rage virus (yes, I did my re-watching). Boyle now officially enters the fantasy/science-fantasy realm.
After the reset of British society, we're on an island close to British shores, connected to the mainland through a strip of land that is walkable during low-tide only. The separation from the mainland allowed the handful of survivors of the Zombie plague to build a sheltered and isolated civilization protected by a castle-like construction. And that, combined with the obviously manorial economic system and the relapse to self-made weaponry such as bows and arrows, gives this society a medieval quality, but with the anachronistic piece of technology here and there - both common features of Fantasy.
Secondly, although coming of age stories can be found in every genre, they have staple character for Fantasy. Here, we follow the merely twelve year old ingenue Spike (Alfie Williams), whose mother has been gravely ill for some time, and whose jerk father decides he's old enough to be a man and thus ready to be initiated in the art of Zombie hunting. Once Spike spends one night on the mainland with his father, he is bewildered by the horror of it all, but also intrigued by a distantly burning fire, which, as he later finds out, is a fire former Doctor Kelson is producing to cremate infected dead bodies, giving the boy hope that a doctor could cure his mother.
There's also lots going on in terms of universe-building, the main plot-propeller being that the Zombie folk started evolving: there are different Zombie races, from the slow-lows, which come crawling and are truly gross to look at, to the fast ones, to the Alpha's, which give off Neanderthal vibes, and are even more dangerous than your average Zombie in that they are smarter, stronger, and faster. Some Alpha scenes really gave me the creeps, it was really well done. Also, they can reproduce, they can have babies, whether those babies turn infected or not, is open-ended.
All this being basically the gist of the universe and the main character of this new cycle, the social commentary was what spoke to me most. I also loved Spike, despite his young age him being able to recognize features of toxic masculinity and its victims, and to take a clear stand against it. He calls out his father when he blows up the story of his first encounter with Zombies to unreasonable proportions, and protects his mom and actively tries to make her life better in contrast to his father who is a flaky, unreliable cheater, who profits from his wife's sickness so he can go fuck other women.
After Brexit, the idea of a Britain isolated from the rest of the world echoes a different tone than it does in the original movie some twenty years ago. Although not excluding the idea of allegorical undertones of both Brexit as well as the COVID pandemic, Boyle does not explicitly state that this was intentional. But he doesn't exclude that there's a playfulness there either.
The UN-troupe and Spike's encounter with the Swedish soldier Eric also implies that apart from Britain, everywhere stayed at the same current day level we all live in, with smartphones determining the course of our everyday life, selfies, surgically enhanced faces (I chuckled at Spike reacting like an old grandpa to Eric's fiancé's picture, assuming her filled lips are an allergic reaction), automatic weapons - all elements of our normality, but not Spike's. That scarcity, simplicity of post-apocalyptic life, as Mark Fisher puts it, post-capitalistic life, the ability and necessity to let go of what used to make life easier, but is dictating life now, is at the heart of every good apocalypse. The island community using bows and arrows reminded me of another science fiction story which back in the day took away my fear of the end of the world, as it very matter-of-factually lists every cycle of life after the majority of society vanishes post-pandemic and how the few survivors deal with each and every stage in their own ways. I am, of course, talking about George R. Stewart's wonderful Earth Abides, in which the making of bows and arrows is the only useful piece of information that can be passed on to the next generation after a couple of decades.
Going back to Spike and his character arc, from the naive kid, he turns into the boy who needs to stand up to the wrong in his world, who learns to fight, who learns to lose, learns his lesson that everyone must die - but he will live before that. And ending up meeting (what I think is) his arch enemy.
The film opens up with the scene of a bunch of kids put in a room to protect them from attacking Zombies and made to watch The Teletubbies so they won't pick up the mayhem happening outside. Too bad, they are locked up in a room they can't escape from when the Zombies come, except for one lucky pup, Jimmy, a clergyman's son. He then witnesses his father being taken by the undead while praying to his god, and who from his hiding place realizes what a joke god has played on them, and loses faith.
The film ends with the same boy, now grown up, in a scene that makes the whole picture infinitely more interesting, and I am dying to know how it will continue. Although people online complain about it, for me the ending was the best part. Did they not understand what's going on?
If you watch the film closely, you will see that there are easter eggs strewn throughout the scenes that hint that the Zombies are not the only hostile forces operating on mainland Britain. The most obvious one of them is Spike's first kill, his first arrow shooting through an infected hanging from the ceiling of an abandoned house, who is left there, as Spike's father speculates, as an act of revenge, to rage for all eternity. The scene is emphasized by freeze framing the violent act, one of Boyle's signature filmic quirks. If you look closely, you will see on its body the carved letters "IMMIES", which is undoubtedly "Jimmies", the vigilante group of Baltic looking youngsters stylishly killing Zombies.
Allegedly Boyle introduces this group of very distinctly Nordic looking fighters with the ulterior motive of referencing to Jimmy Savile. People outside of Britain may not get the allusion, but Jimmy Savile is a television personality who, posthumously turned out to be a sexual child predator in hundreds of cases - nauseating. So Boyle has this group of vigilante Zombie killers, who are... monsters themselves because they worship a monster? And Spike just walked right into their net? On the other hand, isn't the trope of "humans fighting Zombies becoming monsters themselves" just the biggest reference to Romero's Night of the Living Dead, in which Rednecks turn out to be the really harmful monsters? And isn't this an overall motif in the whole series?
You see, there are so many things to look for, so many answers I'm searching in the sequel which will be released in January, 28 weeks later from now!
Movies that give you stuff like this to chew on, to make you ponder and wonder, are simply the best. They don't have to be perfectly made, not beautiful, not all the time coherent, but they need to pique my interest and make me wonder. 28 Years Later unlocked that level and I'm hooked. Can't wait to re-watch this movie yet again.
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