Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po: In all the years in which we have been waiting for 28 Years Later, no one should have expected the teletubbies to mark the return to the zombie apocalypse one day. With radiant faces, they jump into a rolling circus music from their hill house and wave a group of children in front of the television.
In their eyes, however, it is not the carelessness of the Tubbyland with its smiling sun, but the pure horror that is going on in the adjoining rooms: loud rumbling, panicked screams and the pleading look of a mother before the bloodshed does not keep up in front of the children. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland could not have reported more disturbing.
With a friendly smiling teletubbies, 28 Years Later returns to the bared hell of the UK
23 years have passed since Boyle and Garland brought the zombie myth into the 21st century with 28 Days Later and sent the living dead as frenzied infected streets through London’s streets. The loose continuation 28 Weeks Later opened the goal to Europe in their last minutes. With the Teletubbies as an opening act, however, the new film makes it clear early on that Britain remains the center of history.
An island that is completely under quarantine: nobody comes in here and out. The lights of patrol ships can be seen in a long way. The young Spike (Alfie Williams) can only imagine what is hidden behind it. At the age of 12, he is a child of the rage virus who is hunting with an arrow and sheet and does not know how to classify the object in view of a frisbe.
Spike lives with his parents Isla (Jodie Comer) and Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in a community that has withdrawn to a small, remote peninsula. His mother suffers from an enigmatic illness, his father trains him in the struggle for survival. When he first enters the mainland, the columns of smoke on the Horizont Spike’s curiosity arouse: what exists out there that nobody wants to tell him about?
Boyle and Garland turn little time to explain what happened in the 28 years since the first part and with their references to the predecessors in general. Rather, the focus is on discovering the post-apocalyptic world through the eyes of a young person, which transforms 28 Years Later away from the obvious horror and thriller elements into an end-time coming-of-age film.
Giving up at the end of every day: 28 Years Later turns out to be unexpectedly strong coming-of-age film
Carl from The Walking Dead and of course Ellie, who is fighting for her life in the Last of Us, come to mind when Spike is looking for the relationship with adult people to find orientation. Sooner or later, however, he comes across human abysses, which are much more frightening than the obvious death that lurks at the gates of his homeland and moves tirelessly through the floods.
However, 28 Years Later does not need Negan or Abbey, who smash the “good” with bestial acts to work out spike pain. His father’s mistakes and lies as well as the blindness of the Brexit village community, into which he was born, lead the boy to take off and save his mother alone, which leads us back to the road-movie character of the original.
Spike has to burn down a piece of home to understand the larger picture of the world, which Boyle itself only fragmentally fits into the film with wildly thrown at the film. Suddenly the night sky soaks into screeching red and the infected races as demons with glowing eyes through the undergrowth-especially Alpha, which goes through as an ultra-brutal uruk shark of the 28-universe.
The perfect mix of digital image noise and stormy rain, which increases in 28 Days Later to John Murphy’s pulsating masterpiece in the house – none of the clever constructed sequences of 28 Years Later approaches a heartbeat on the soundtrack. After all these years, Boyle has lost nothing of his bite as a director and uncompromisingly leans into the frenzy of his modern zombies.
28 Years Later is another digital extreme film by Danny Boyle, who shy away from absolutely nothing
After the raw camcorder aesthetics of the first film, Boyle and cameraman Anthony Dod Mantle are now using drones and iPhones. Sometimes 20 of the Apple devices were screwed to an oval device to create 180-degree recordings that are as immediate as it is shocking. 28 Years Later feels extremely immersive as if the rage virus in the film itself are romping.
With the consequences of the image and distorting objective, we path through dilapidated suburbs, abandoned petrol stations and a palace of dead heads, which makes the film previously shown in a completely different light. Sometimes they are swollen, sometimes soaked in orange-brown colors. Sometimes they bring new life into the world, sometimes they are simply torn apart.
How innocently the teletubbies danced under the baby sun in the first few minutes. Spike has to grow up in a quick run and experience several extremes in this British end-time vision that joins Boyle as a rabid pop-art-Odyssey. Whatever you imagined under a sequel to 28 Days Later: 28 Years Later has become an absolutely unleashed and unexpectedly emotional film monster.
28 Years Later will run in German cinemas from June 19, 2025.