The main spoilers for “28 years later” follow.
There is a little information you need to know before looking at “28 years later”: this is not a complete story. Okay, of course, the film has its own narrative arch, but this is supposed to be the first of a brand new film trilogy. The second, entitled “28 years later: The Bone Temple”, is already shot and is expected to be released next year. But if you didn’t know, you could look at the end of “28 years later” and be completely perplexed. I am almost positive that some members of my audience for the press were unconscious of this information, because I heard a lot of them growled and express the confusion after the great culminating moment of the film.
It is quite frustrating on the whole, because as I said in my criticism, “28 years later” is damn brilliant. In fact, everything until the end works and works exceptionally well. And then, the director Danny Boyle and the writer Alex Garland Tack on a completely wacky end moment intended to set up the next film. The tone of this scene does not correspond at all to the rest of the film, and it feels like we have accidentally started to watch a completely different film.
In short, it does not work and it is required to confuse certain people.
The 28 years later Prologue sets up the strange end of the film, and the next film to come
To be fair, the end “28 years later” is not completely out of the left field. The seeds of the final (and what comes then) are planted in the very disturbing prologue of the film. This moment returns at the start of the Rage virus epidemic that we saw in the first film. We see a group of children somewhere in the Scottish Highlands watching “Teletubbies” on television in a house.
Suddenly, chaos bursts while infected people irredent. The parents of the children are quickly sent, just like the children themselves. But one of them, a boy named Jimmy, escapes. He runs to a neighboring church where he meets his father, a priest. Rather than being afraid of infected, this man of God considers the event as a holy and divine moment. He gives a crossroads to young Jimmy and then allows a horde of ghouls infected to attack him. Jimmy looks with horror his father turns into a monster. It’s scary of things! And then the film jumps … 28 years later.
After this intro, “28 years later” zeros on completely different characters. Our main objective is Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old child who lives on an isolated island with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his mother Isla (Jodie Comer). Great Britain has actually been quarantined by the rest of the world, trapping the hordes of infected people (and those who are not infected) inside, and Spike and his family live in peace, isolated from the continent and its infected ghouls.
Jimmy returns in the last moments of 28 years later
Throughout the film, we remember Jimmy via graffiti scribbled on a wall and his name has widened in the chest of an infected person (quite confused, the character of Cillian Murphy in the first film, “28 days later”, “is Also Named Jim, but these are clearly not supposed to be the same person). The involvement is that Jimmy is there, somewhere.
Isla suffers from a mysterious disease, and Spike decides to take her on a dangerous journey through the infected continent to find a doctor (Ralph Fiennes) to help her heal. Along the way, Spike and Isla save a baby nursing by an infected woman (the baby does not seem infected). Finally, they find the doctor, who unfortunately tells them that Isla has cancer and that she will soon die – and she does it, peacefully.
After Isla’s death, Spike drops the baby into his island community but chooses to go on the continent by himself and to explore. Boyle and Garland should ended the film here. Instead, there is a truly eccentric scene where Spike is saved from a horde of infects by a GOOFBAL gang wearing bright colors (the colors of their clothes reflect the colors of the teletubbies). This group makes a pile of backflips and move the parkour and kills the group of infects, then the gang leader (played by “sinners” Vampire Jack O’Connell) presents himself to Spike: his name is Jimmy! You know, like the child at the start of the film! Rolling credits.
O’Connell clearly has fun in his brief scene, but his character feels SO Strange – and its strange outfit, which seems to be a direct reference to the personality of notorious English television Jimmy Savile, comes out like a sore thumb. Will it make sense in the next film? Probably. But here, he feels completely moved and it hurts a film that is also strong. This is another example of modern films that do not understand that they can say A Complete the story without creating an entire franchise. I am interested in seeing where the history of here is going (it seems clear that even if Jimmy and his gang have helped Spike, he is probably Bad news), but “28 years later” did not need to end like this.
