Movie Review: 28 Years Later... (2025)

28 Years Later... (2025) directed by Danny Boyle

A long time after the first movie (and seemingly ignoring the second), society in infected England is more or less gone. Holy Island has a thriving human community since it is isolated from the rest of England during high tide. The locals have made a fence and watchtower to keep out the infected. Their community gets by pretty well with the occasional excursions into England proper. One tradition is when a boy goes over to kill some infected using a bow and arrow, so it's a rite of passage to manhood. Spike (Alfie Williams) is taken by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on such an excursion, against the wishes of Spike's mom Isla (Jodie Comer). She is sick in bed with an unidentified illness that is also de facto incurable since Holy Island has no doctor. On "mainland" England, Spike has a rough time of it but spots some fires or lights in the distance. The light at sea is a patrol boat enforcing the quarantine of England. The light on the island is another matter which Jamie refuses to explain. Back in town, Spike finds out the fires are kept by a doctor who may or may not be crazy. Spike decides to take his mom to be cured by the doctor because he is desperate. Jamie objects but Spike contrives an opportunity to escape. His adventure seeking a cure for his mom will be a rougher but more certain path to manhood.

While the premise is interesting, I found it a little too unbelievable. The movie starts with a 28-year-old flashback of a priest's son fleeing from his small town with a cross from his dad, who embraces the apocalyptic nature of the Rage virus outbreak. The sequence seems like tone-setting but it becomes a bookend with an elaborate and very hard to believe final scene. The main story is okay if a bit episodic. Spike goes from a scared kid to a more mature fellow in a good way, given the bonkers world he lives in. The actors are generally good. The atmosphere is bleak and the visuals have the excessive cutting used in most modern zombie films. As a projection of the first film's future, this retains a bleak attitude but adds a much more sentimental attitude that doesn't quite fit.

Not recommended--this is a hodge-podge of ideas that don't quite hang together as a coherent whole.

Movie Review: 28 Days Later... (2002)

28 Days Later... (2002) directed by Danny Boyle

Some do-gooders break into a Cambridge lab that is experimenting on monkeys to free the primates from their exploitation. One of the scientist stumbles upon the invaders and tries to stop them because the monkeys are infected with "Rage" and will spread contamination. The do-gooders don't buy it until they open one of the cages and the monkey bites. That one do-gooder starts throwing up blood, which infects the others as the scene fades to black. 28 days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital bed. No one is in the hospital, no one is on the streets of London, television and radio are static. Jim is utterly alone and confused. He goes to a church where he discovers a dead congregation, though a few of them pop up and growl at him. The pastor comes out of a side room and tries to attack Jim. He flees with infected parishioners in pursuit. Two other survivors (Naomi Harris and Noah Huntley) save him and take him to shelter in a gated convenience store. Jim finds out about the Rage virus and how it has wiped out most of England. He wants to check on his parents; the couple tell him they are dead or worse but Jim still insists on going. Thus starts a long odyssey through infected England as they try to survive the horde of the undead at every turn.

On the good side, they get through the cause of the zombie infection right away, which is always the least plausible part of any zombie movie. People switch from human to virus-infected killing machine in ten to twenty seconds. Anything that acts that fast would just kill most people, so I found the transformation unbelievable. But they rush through that and don't look back, letting viewers go along if they don't notice. The visuals are very visceral and the whole tone has the bleakness of a lot of zombie films.Viewers don't have to work hard to imagine that any character might die at any moment.

Which brings up stuff on the bad side. The movie is unrelentingly bleak until the confusing upbeat ending. In a lot of horror films, there's something you can rely on for safety. Jim goes to a church and there is no sanctuary inside, only danger. The government, which should be taking care of the citizens, is completely gone. The military show up in the final third but they turn out to be villains worse than the infected. The characters can barely rely on each other since they might change almost immediately into the infected. Little jokes pop up here and there but not enough to relieve the tension or provide a break from the misery. The movie is too nihilistic for my tastes. Then the ending, where the survivors put out sheets on the ground spelling "HELLO" as a jet fighter goes by overhead is confusing. Who has enough infrastructure left to be flying military jets? Why can't they broadcast on radio, television, ham radio, etc., to England? A character claims that, as an island nation, they've been quarantined. But why doesn't everybody know about it? The movie falls flat once you start thinking about it.

Mildly recommended--this movie did do a lot to make the zombie genre more mainstream and it looks great. Just don't look under the hood, the engine might be missing.

Movie Review: Yesterday (2019)

Yesterday (2019) directed by Danny Boyle

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling songwriter and singer. He plays the pubs and street corners of small town England and can't get noticed. His manager Ellie (Lily James) is a grade-school maths teacher who drives him to gigs and believes in him and his music. One night as he is biking home from a gig (he's about at rock bottom), a world-wide blackout happens and Jack is hit by a bus in the darkness. He loses his beard and some teeth but soon discovers that the world has lost something much more significant--the Beatles! No one remembers the Beatles or their songs and even the internet has no information. Once Jack figures out this is not elaborate practical joke, he sings the Fab Four's songs and claims them as his own. He gets noticed very quickly and is soon swept up into the professional music world. Ed Sheeran (Ed Sheeran) hires Jack as an opening act. As soon as Ed's manager (Kate McKinnon) hears Jack, she works to turn him into a pop sensation. Jack agrees which means he has to leave Ellie and his other friends behind. Is it worth it for a life that is a lie?

The movie starts off wonderfully. Jack and Ellie are charming and the wacky "no Beatles" premise creates interesting possibilities and dynamics. Boyle and screenwriter Richard Curtis (of Love Actually fame) do a brilliant job capturing the magic of Beatles songs and the hollowness of the corporate music industry. The movie is a bit predictable and the ending is a little too conventional to be great. I was expecting something more for the finale but they seem to have run out of creative ideas. The film is nine-tenths entertaining, which is great by modern standards.

Recommended.

Movie Review: Millions (2004)

Millions (2004) directed by Danny Boyle

A dad and two sons move to a new house (in a newly built neighborhood) after the death of the mother. They settle in quickly and the younger son, Damian, takes some of the moving boxes to make a little fort or house near the railroad tracks. Being England, there are plenty of trains going by. Settling in at school is tougher. Damian has a great devotion to the saints and can go on and on about them. Occasionally it's awkward and it seems to keep him from making friends. He has the saints as imaginary friends. One day while Damian is in the moving box house and talking to St. Clare of Assissi (he asks her if his mum has shown up in Heaven; she's not sure since she doesn't see everyone who comes in), a satchel full of money falls out of the sky and flattens the boxes. Damian shows the money to his brother Anthony. Damian assumes it's a gift from God, since he's been praying for his mum. He naturally wants to do good with the money, giving it to the poor and such. Anthony has more practical and selfish plans for the money, like impressing his fellow students and such. The secret can't last forever, though, since the British Pound is a few weeks away from being replaced by the Euro.

The movie is very charming and has a lot more going on than the relationship between the brothers and the money. Damian is innocent and imaginative but not unintelligent. He has a great moral sense and strength of character. Yet he's still a child, with a sense of wonder and what's right. He believes in miracles even though the movie seems to be at pains to provide natural explanations. Even so, it doesn't ridicule him for his belief and even ultimately affirms his view as more valuable than that of his brother or his father (who thinks his wife is gone and they will never see her again in an afterlife).

The movie is a surprisingly funny and upbeat work from the director of Sunshine and 28 Days Later...  The movie gives viewers a lot to mull over afterwards, something I like very much. I would definitely recommend the movie.

For a deeper discussion of the movie, check out A Good Story is Hard to Find Podcast #123. Thanks for recommending the movie, Scott and Julie. I probably wouldn't have watched it without the motivation!