Summary
- 28 Years Later must balance staying true to the rage virus’ grounded origins while innovating in a saturated zombie genre.
- The originality of 28 Days Later came from infected humans, not undead zombies, adding intrigue to the genre.
- To stand out, the movie must avoid generic zombie tropes and recapture the originality of the first two films.
Now that the first trailer for 28 Years Later has been launched and a release date has been officially announced, fans of the long-running movie series have something to be quite excited about. Of course, with the new Alex Garland and Danny Boyle film, it looks like a real change in the story and the formula that’s been at the center of the franchise so far. 28 Years Later needs to find a way to walk the line between staying in line with the franchise and standing out in a horror genre that’s evergrowing.
Zombie movies and television shows have never been bigger than they are right now. It feels like every other horror movie released has got some sort of undead monster at the center of it. And because of that, there are few aspects of the genre that haven’t been covered. That’s one of the things that made 28 Days Later such an impressive flick. It allowed for people who love zombie movies to see another one, but this one had a twist. At first glance, it looks like the twist is being removed for 28 Years Later and that could be a problem for the third film in the trilogy.
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Does 28 Years Later Miss The Point?
So why was 28 Days Later such an impressive change from what people normally expect from zombie movies? The “monsters” that were first rampaging through the streets and then the british countryside weren’t “monsters” at all. The people didn’t transform into zombies. They were still people, they were just people who could no longer control themselves because of the rage virus.
That meant they could still be killed. And they could still die. That made them more interesting than the regular zombie because Danny Boyle answered a question in the movie that likely occurred to everyone while they were watching it. “How long can these things last if they’re really just people?” Sure, there’s still some questions into how the logic of these people work. The movie explained that the infected were dying of starvation, but in reality, they’d die much quicker from thirst, especially since they ran around vomiting blood on their vicitms in order ot infect more people.
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28 Years Later |
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Screenplay |
Alex Garland |
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Director |
Danny Boyle |
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Starring |
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer |
However, the main point of the entire movie is that these are not undead human beings. They still have functioning bodily systems. They need to eat and drink and can feel pain. The rage virus in the 28 Days Later trilogy has just made it so they don’t care about most of that stuff.
That is of course, a big part of the beginning of 28 Weeks Later. The last of the infected have died out and the rest of the world is ready to start putting the UK back together. And that plan would have worked, if the people repopulating London hadn’t found a woman who was infected but not showing outward signs of the virus. That’s how the virus sparked up again. And that begs the question. How does the setting for 28 Years Later even work?
28 Years Later Can’t Fall Off The Tight Rope
The first plot details of 28 Years Later tell the story of a world that the virus has beset in a way that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when weighed against the first two movies. How exactly was the virus able to stick around long enough to take over the entire world? How were the people infected able to live long enough that it appears there are whole generations of people being raised in a world where the infected still exist?
How were the people infected able to live long enough that it appears there are whole generations of people being raised in a world where the infected still exist?
One of the aspects of 28 Years Later is that the virus and the infected have “evolved” in a way that apparently makes these people actual zombies now. And that’s where the tight rope really comes into play. This latest Alex Garland and Danny Boyle movie is charting a totally different course. And in the process, looks like it might just be another end of the world zombie movie.
That means that Boyle and Garland have a big task ahead of them. They need to find a way to stay inside the borders that the two first films in this trilogy created. And to find a way to stand out in a zombie movie genre that’s flooded with films.
There are plenty of ways they could go about this but step one is explaining how in the world the virus changed. It should be done pretty early on and it really shouldn’t be ambiguous at all. There will be plenty of people who spend the whole movie wondering what changed from the rules already laid out if Boyle doesn’t show or tell them. And he has to do it in a way that makes people still see a 28 Years Later that stands out from the pack. It would be a real shame if this turned into just another zombie movie after all the work put in to make the first two anything but.
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