Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 15 (28 Years Later)

It's another curious place I'm in here, as the astute among you will note I've not actually talked about anything from this series before. I know it by reputation, mostly by the fact that it bucked the usual zombie trend by having the zombies be able to run really fast at you to get you. Also not traditional undead zombies, but people infected by a plague. Kay. I knew all that going in, and didn't quite know what to expect. The result is a strange film, but one with a lot of artistic merit and thematic weight. I'm not sure if I get all of it, or if my read is correct, but as always I'm going to take a stab at it. Let's talk about some fast and spooky British zambabinos, I guess.

Okay so it's a movie from the 2020s about a Britain that gets completely cut off from the rest of the world due to a crazy virus. Like, holy shit. The dual metaphor is so on the nose that I don't even have to give you a follow-up sentence explaining it for you to get it. But I like ya (and need to inflate the word count) so I will. It's Brexit plus COVID, slammed right into you like a piledriver. From the brief glimpses we see, it seems like the rest of the world is doing fine while the UK is just cut off from everything and left to decay into a crazy nightmare. Yet, there are those who survive and soldier on. The isolated island village with its causeway that only comes up at low tide is a great setpiece, similar to that one French castle that has the same deal, and the people seem to be doing okay here. As glimpses into the post-apocalyptic UK go, better here than in fucking Threads. The only other real survivors we see are Erik the soldier and Dr. Kelson (aside from the ending which HOO BOY) and we get few peeks into the outside. Instead, it's all the interiority of a child born into this world, Spike, on the edge of maturity into a man... and what that means.

Now, there's a lot more going on under the hood than just my bullshit analysis, but to me there's this vibe of Spike choosing his role in the world, and how he interacts with traditional society's ideas of masculinity and femininity. The opening 30 minutes are him with his dad on a hunting trip out to the mainland, encountering spooky zombies and shooting them with bows and arrows as a rite of passage type thing. Spike isn't the best at it, hesitating in places and getting spooked in others, but passably holds his own. He still isn't really feeling it, though. The ideal of masculinity is challenged when he sees his dad cheating and realizes that his main male role model isn't actually that great of a guy, especially given the fact that the mom of the house is sick. So, with rumors of a crazy doctor living out in the wastes, Spike takes his mom on a poorly-thought out unapproved jaunt through the wilderness to find this guy and save her. Now, the fact that he emphasizes and relates more with his mom is interesting to me specifically. Given that I had a whole project on this blog about a piece of zombie media that asked us to have empathy for zombies instead of shooting them in the head, imagine how intrigued I was when Ilsa helps an infected pregnant lady give birth, and the two are able to bond and connect in that moment. There's a feminine energy here, an energy of empathy and kindness, and then a little baby to look after.

Of course, Erik the soldier shoots that lady and then wants to kill the baby before he gets his fucking head ripped off like a Mortal Kombat fatality, but that's besides the point. I'm not saying that empathy is a solely feminine thing or anything here, but it's something for Spike to grapple with as he grows up in the post-apocalypse, an aspect to take on that's more than just "shoot the zombie in the head". This comes out especially with the meeting with Dr. Kelson, who is knowledgeable while also dealing in death, creating a monument out of skulls and giving them and their deaths meaning. It's really powerful and poignant stuff for a zombie movie, and tragic tearjerker drama that you would not expect to find in the genre. By the end of the movie, Spike is a little more grown up, looking to find his place in the world without parental figures, to see what he can take on in this hellish wasteland.

...Then the ending happens with these blonde weirdos, and I didn't get what they were doing until I looked it up but the main guy is based on Jimmy Saville? Whose crimes I will not repeat here but were vast and terrible? What in the fuck are they doing? It's a bizarre sequel hook (and this is apparently a duology, the next one due out in a few months time) that all but comes out of nowhere, is just a brief snippet of zombie-killing porn that we already got in the main movie proper, and has really fucked up implications. What in the fuck are they doing?? Maybe I'll find out next Halloween, but putting all of that aside... What an interesting zombie motion picture. A different vibe to a George Romero or something, but a uniquely British vibe about coming of age. Okay, kids. Only one left. You know what has to come next, and it ain't gonna be pretty, so let's take the gloves off and rumble.

Trick or treat, motherfucker.