A zombie movie fused with a coming of age tale, Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have released something unprecedented within the undead genre by putting out "28 Years Later …".
Initially, the start of the film lags given the setting making me believe that I walked into "How To Train Your Dragon", but hitting the box office at the same time, "28 Years Later …" is a different tale for a mature audience but still carrying the morality lessons of how a boy becomes a man.
It's refreshing to have a tale like this hit the screens in the 2020's, especially with so many film companies opting for softer feminine features instead of a film like "28 Years …" which is unapologetically masculine.
Though the film, given it's pale cast and setting can be easily thrown in the white supremacist category, Garland smartly targets some of the main tenets of European culture and how it's colonization tactics have led to the apocalyptic hell depicted through Boyle's lens.
Social commentary bashing organized religion, european colonization, the oil industry, the marriage industry, the food industry, the death industry, the medical industry and more are all there hidden in plain sight for intelligent viewers to decipher while they enjoy watching the so-called "dominant society" be reduced to naked neanderthalism, indulging in similar practices they already do in their so-called "civilized" societies, just without clothing - and since Western societies practices are based in barbarism well placed arrows to the head and chest are what these zombies are treated with as the film rolls on in spectacular fashion like something out of a surreal videogame where viewers get a full 720° of the entry and exit wounds, courtesy of the "28"-series creator Danny Boyle.
The soundtrack contains elements of punk and doom metal while the background music provided by the Young Fathers emulates the mood of the placed tracks perfectly.
Aaron Taylor Johnson films tend to be hit or miss (from Kick-Ass to Ass-Kick, just ask Quicksilver and Kraven) but his supporting role as Spike's father blows anything he's done before out the water.
He even gets a Michael Douglas "Falling Down" ending. What more can an actor ask for in their filmography?
Violence, love, masculinity, and morals in a zombie flick? Usually this is a pick a couple and leave the rest behind situation; but Garland and Boyle have done it all with "28 Years Later …" . Now it makes sense to see why Boyle decided to bring this series back from the dead some twenty eight years later from the first entry of this phenomenal franchise.
