Introduction to a New Terror
When 28 Days Later hit screens in 2002, it unleashed a new, tangible sense of everyday terror, as Cillian Murphy stumbled around London’s chillingly deserted streets and landmarks, emptied by a zombie virus outbreak. In March 2020, the dystopian nightmare became a reality when the Covid pandemic turned the capital into a ghost town. While Murphy’s character flooded Oxford Street with "missing" posters, today there is a memorial wall opposite Parliament to remind us of the 200,000 deaths in the UK.
Life After Survival
In this constantly changed climate, the original director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland returned to their world filled with a virus at the age of 28. In conversation with BBC News, Boyle says that a sudden, life-threatening transformation – even without zombies – has intensified terror for the audience because "what we used to be" in films "now feels better". But it is the way we have adapted and learned to live with Covid within the limits of an unstable, vulnerable reality that is of central importance for the new film.
The New Generation
In this latest chapter, the "infected" victims of the Rage virus, most recently shown how it reached Europe 287 weeks later by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo – and redesigned according to British bank. While the rest of the world heals, the remaining surviving Great Britain remained for themselves. Among them is the 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), who lives with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the homely Isla (Jodie Comer) on Holy Island off England’s northeast coast. In this 150-member sanctuary, he has always known only a feudal life connected by a single, heavily defended dam with the quarantined day, which is only accessible at low tide.
Hard Truths
Boyle says that the decision to have a young main character is intended, not only because "horror loves innocence", but also the truths that adults decide to tell children – and hide from them – to continue. The emotional tension is something that corner can refer to and outside the screen. "I felt it with my own parents," Comer says, talking to me next to Boyle. "When they tried to protect me and think that it was better not to worry me. But there were moments when I thought I really wanted that they had shared it with me because I might have done something else … or more time with someone. But in the end, it always comes from a place of love."
Zombie Nation
Comer is no stranger to crisis stories. She played the mother of a newborn before an apocalyptic flood at the end, and a nursing home nurse in Covid Drama Help! But 28 Years Later, her first representation marks someone who is so deep in post-apocalyptic life. It is her first time with zombies. What is it like to be persecuted by the infected? "Exciting," she replies. The scenes are based on the gravel realism of the film. No CGI or green screen was used, the "infected" players sometimes spend hours in the makeup chair.
Real Rage Virus
When I ask Boyle why, as the director of many genres, he returns to horror so ambitiously, especially with the zombie, which dominates the last of us TV adaptation that dominates the zeitgeist, he suggests that he was stimulated by an urgent political undercurrent. In addition to Spike’s lessons in humanity, Boyle emphasizes a stagnating culture on the island that "is not progressive, stands still … Review of the Halcyon Days of England". The director describes the feudal lifestyle of the island as deceptively safe, but ultimately regressive – recognize some spike.
The Power of Cinema
For Boyle, 28 Years Later, it is the audience that is exposed to the horror as well as the horror itself – real or presented. Two decades later we only know too well how they can blur. In the original 28 Days Later, the rage virus was developed by enforcing chimpanzees to watch graphic video material. I ask Boyle whether he sees a parallel in the real rise of social media, with its personalized algorithm, which serves to reward polarizing, angry content. "We are encouraged to communicate through these things," he replies, and keeps his phone up quickly. "They are incredibly powerful – and easily manipulable. But they let us go through [the screen] talk to each other." In contrast, he says that cinema has "something immaterial but amazing" and other collective human experiences. What matters is the authentic connection of the cinema – to share something ", which is not about it," he says, pointing to his phone. "It is very fragile, but it is very important and we have to hold on as much as possible."
