There is trepidation going into any sequel or further franchise instalment, a fear that the new property won’t live up to what came before or worse still will even damage its predecessors in some way by tarnishing your feelings towards them. Given some of the tonal shifts and wild stabs that the first 28 Years Later film made, I certainly had little idea of what was in store for me. As the lights dimmed and the familiar font lit up the bottom right hand side of the screen, I was slightly scared, not just at the prospect of watching a horror film but at the prospect of losing my way in a franchise that had held some grip on me for 20 years or so. At full time I was relieved to have gotten the result I wanted but still quite baffled at all the twists and turns that had gotten us there.
The film opens by reintroducing us to our protagonist from the first movie in the trilogy, Spike (Alfie Williams), who is now being initiated into the gang of ‘Jimmy’s’ that we met at the very end of our last instalment. The blonde haired, tracksuit clad gang are led by Jack O’Connell’s ‘Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal’ who, as suspected, will be a central figure in the film. He starts as he means to go on, bating and manipulating his gang into a cruel act of violence as he forces Spike to fight to earn his way into the group. Lord Jimmy is every bit as sadistic and twisted as we would have expected from his small cameo in the exit of the previous movie, part cult leader and part court jester, he continuously performs for his followers as he builds a mythology around himself and the infection, weaving his ego with circumstance to put himself in complete control and get whatever he wants. And what does he want? It seems, to revel in as much pain and suffering as his subordinates are able to dish out whilst continuing to inflate his already sizeable messiah complex. Jack O’ Connell’s performance in this role is astounding, conveying a myriad of malevolence as well as moments of vulnerability, shaken self confidence and the most twisted humour. We find ourselves following the Jimmies as they navigate through the Northumberland hellscape looking for anyone, infected or non-infected to serve suffering to.
The other narrative thread of the film comes from Ralph Fiennes iodine stained Dr. Ian Kelson, who as we know is the sole inhabitant of the titular ‘Bone Temple’. After 28 years in what we imagine to be almost complete solitude, Dr. Kelson’s only link back to the life he once knew or any life at all seems to be through death and this is where we once again find him, commemorating those lost in the epidemic through his ever expanding skeletal memorial. However as we further follow Dr. Kelson we see he has adopted a new way of connecting to the living word by trying to understand the nature of the infected, in particular one member who he as affectionately named Samson, an ‘alpha’ played by Chi-Lewis Perry. Our Kelson and Samson sections of the film range from slow and mediative to joyous, funny and strangely life affirming, punctuated by needle drops and moments of real heart as we follow the unlikely companions on their somewhat stationary journey.
As expected from an Alex Garland script the movie is rich with metaphor and allegory, our two central characters in particular holding up mirrors to show how this fictional world reflects our own. Jimmy thrives on misinformation and manipulation which at times doesn’t seem too distant from our own times of bad actors and uncertain truths whilst a Kelson monologue where he harks back to a pre-infection age sounds eerily like he could be describing a life before the internet and all that has come with it. Nia DaCosta’s direction doesn’t stray too far from what we saw in the first instalment but shy’s away slightly from the slick camera tricks of Danny Boyle in the action sequences and throughout the piece relies on lighting shifts to guide us through the changing moods of the varying narratives. It’s no less visually stunning than what has come before, if maybe a little more subtle.
The film concludes with a collision course which gives us a ferocious and farcical set piece to rival anything seen in the franchise to date before setting us off on the path to the third part of the trilogy, which is rumoured to have been given the green light after early reaction to this movie but may still be dependant on box office performance to go into production. We close with the franchises worst kept secret but one I won’t spoil here and are left wondering after all the directions that the ’28’ world has taken us in so far, how close to home we may just end up.
