28 Years Later Is Less “Zombie Movie”, & More “Coming-of-Age Fairytale”

This article contains spoilers for 28 Years Later.

28 Years Later was not at all what I expected. I went into the movie looking for a return to the gritty, ultra-realistic horror of 2002’s 28 Days Later. I wanted to re-experience the terror I felt as a 10 year-old (yes, I was definitely way too young to be exposed to movies like that at 10 — thanks, dad) when the priest lurched towards Jim in the church with bloodshot eyes and twisted limbs, and to be mortified when the film revealed these infected fucks could run.

Even beyond the violence and the fear of the macabre unknown, 28 Days Later was an excellent study of human nature and the primal instincts of mankind. It’s an idea that’s been explored to death in most modern zombie genre movies. When everything falls apart, we find out what we’re really capable of.

What I got was a surprisingly tender film about a boy being forced to grow up too fast. Instead of scaring the audience with body horror, gore, and existential dread, Boyle and Garland have chosen to instill in us the fear of losing our childhood innocence. 28 Years Later isn’t a zombie genre movie. Not really. It’s more akin to a Brothers’ Grimm fairytale about learning the meaning of death.

As the title suggests, 28 Years Later takes place 28 years after an infection outbreak occurs in Britain. Scientists were experimenting on monkeys with some sort of rage virus in a lab. Some animal rights activists freed the monkeys, they go wild, and before you know it, society is in shambles. Now, humankind has regressed. Our protagonist, a 12 year-old boy named Spike (Alfie Williams), resides on Holy Island, a small island just off the shore of the mainland with a causeway that’s only accessible during low tide.

Throughout the film’s nearly two-hour runtime, Spike’s journey takes him through several very different lessons about death from various mentor figures in his life.

The Father’s Lesson on Death

The first half of the film centers around Spike’s first visit to the mainland with his very strapping dad, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The expedition is a rite of passage for young men on the island. You leave the little community for the very first time, get your first kill, and soon you’ll be making more frequent visits to the mainland to help forage for food and resources.

There are, of course, plenty of spooks to be had along the way, but the main takeaway comes when Jamie and Spike discover an infected man hung by his feet from the rafters in a dilapidated house. Unlike the big, bloated slow-lows they’d encountered right before this, the infected man feels different. He, at least, still looks human. Jamie tells Spike to kill him. Killing gets easier the more he does it.

The lesson to be learned from Jamie, then, is that death is necessary for survival. Kill your enemies or they’ll kill you.

Unfortunately, Jamie is also responsible for the death of Spike’s childhood when the film reveals that he’s been cheating on his wife with another married woman. Spike realizes his dad has been dishonest this entire time, not just in his infidelity but in refusing to tell him about Isla’s illness. The sense of disillusionment is palpable when Spike finally stands up to Jamie and it’s in that moment where he finally stops being a kid.

The Mother’s Lesson on Death

The second time Spike goes to the mainland, it’s with his sick mother Isla (Jodie Comer). Isla is sick and frequently experiences episodes of hallucination and madness. When Spike learns of a doctor’s existence on the mainland, he sneaks out with his mother in hopes of finding a cure for her.

This journey is a tough one. Even before we meet the doctor, it becomes abundantly clear that no medication is going to save Isla. Her episodes get so bad that she even begins thinking Spike is her father. She swims in and out of lucidity, oftentimes thinking she’s a little girl again on a roadtrip with her dad.

When we eventually meet Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), the doctor, we learn that Isla has cancer, and it’s terminal. During the film’s most poignant scene where Kelson euthanizes Isla and burns her body down as Spike processes everything in a drug-induced haze, we learn that survival isn’t everything. Sometimes, death is a mercy and survival just for the sake of it means nothing.

The Doctor’s Lesson on Death

Finally, Kelson also imparts a very important lesson about death to Spike. As evidenced by his little Bone Temple and his repeated phrases “memento mori” and “memento amoris”, Kelson teaches Spike that death is a necessary part of life. It shows us how precious life and love are, and no matter what, everyone dies sometime. Some deaths are brutal, like the deaths that Jamie and Spike are forced to inflict on the infected, but others can be peaceful and meaningful, like Isla’s euthanasia.

In true fairytale fashion, after our young protagonist learns everything there is to learn about death, he’s ready to embark on his own adventure without his mentors. It’s equal parts sad and hopeful — there’s melancholy in Spike being forced to grow up so quickly as a 12 year-old who still looks fondly on his little robot toys, and hope in Spike becoming a better man because of all he’s learned and everything else he still has to discover.

The Dreamlike Nature of 28 Years Later

I suspect it’s not a coincidence that 28 Years Later is so full of soft, dreamy shots in the forest either. The lush greenery paired with wooden structures and weakening brick buildings add to the film’s fairytale fantasy vibe, a stark contrast to the harshness of The Last of Us, for example, which also embraces the return of nature but pairs that with hard concrete and frequent reminders of the modern world.

Boyle and Garland aren’t afraid to get weird with the film either, with dream sequences shot in stark red and white, and a visually striking (and very intense) chase sequence with an Alpha infected charging after Jamie and Spike across a causeway bathed in water and starlight, as if we’re no longer on Earth, but in the cosmos.

28 Years Later ends on an absolutely wild cliffhanger when Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), a young boy in the opening scene who watches his father get attacked by the infected and transform, shows up again all grown up. When we first see him on outbreak day, he’s enjoying an episode of Teletubbies on the telly before everything goes to hell. This time, he’s accompanied by a gang of rascals dressed in brightly colored jumpsuits, almost like a twisted version of the Teletubbies. While Jimmy’s been set up to be the antagonist for the follow-up, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, it’s clear that his own childhood has died as well, though perhaps he’s still holding onto it in a twisted way. The ending scene was brief, but Jimmy’s gang sure did give me major Lost Boys vibes.

28 Years Later didn’t strike that same visceral fear in my fragile heart like 28 Days Later did, but there’s something to be appreciated about its quieter dread. Like its predecessors, 28 Years Later is less about the monsters outside and more about facing the death of the things that made us feel safe: childhood, parents, toys. What Spike actually does with those lessons, though, remains to be seen.

28 Years Later started airing in cinemas on June 20.