28 Years Later                    5 stars

It has been a long time since Great Britain was overrun by hordes of infected rampaging humans hungry for flesh in Danny Boyle’s (127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire) 28 Days Later. That movie was a survivalist story of a few remaining sane humans trying to survive against the angry zombie like creatures that inhabit the island kingdom. Fortunately, humanity was able to limit the disease from spreading to the rest of the world, leaving Britain in a state of quarantine. In the just out sequel, 28 Years Later, Boyle and his collaborator Alex Garland bring us back to this hellscape to see what has transpired in the intervening years. But first we must be brought up to date with scenes of what happened in the first place when the rampage started. We visit a house where the infected overrun a family and one young boy named Jimmy escapes only to see the village priest torn apart by the horde. Scenes of battling and destruction are accompanied by a horrifying 1915 reading of a Rudyard Kipling poem with a steady escalating beat. (You should look up the trailer on YouTube.) Finally, we come to the present on a small island off the coast of Britain where the inhabitants carry on isolated from the rest of the world, constantly on guard against the threat on the mainland. In this community we meet 12-year-old Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams), his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Nosferatu and Bullet Train) and mother Isla (Jodie Comer of The Bikeriders). It is time for Spike to go on his first hunt on the mainland, with his father to hunt down and kill the infected. They are told that once they leave the island there are no rescue parties. On the mission, we find out that there are now varieties of infected people. There are the sprinting dead who rush madly at their target. There are the starving dead who look like skin covered skeletons. There are the crawlers, who are extremely overweight and can only crawl on the ground and eat worms, but still attack people. Then there are the Alpha’s who are like a new superior species of humans who only flinch when they are hit square with an arrow. After this brief adventure when father and son return to their island having killed a few of the loonies, Spike is very concerned about his sick mother and learns of a legendary old doctor who stayed on the mainland. Since there is no such thing as a doctor on the island, Spike believes that finding this doctor could save his mother from dying, so off to the mainland go Spike and Mom, unknown to poor Dad. Eventually after surviving more attacks, they do find the old doctor whose name is Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes of Schindler’s List) who brings a sense of wisdom, morality and politeness to the movie. Even his monuments to the dead, built out of human bones, bring us a reassuring feeling. Up to this point it was all paranoia as the characters had to endure one frenzied attack after another from the crazed infected beings who are always naked. (After 28 years nobody wants to deal with putting on clothes anymore.) The doctor’s outlook brings a sense of hope and optimism to the crazy world we see in the movie. Before 28 Days Later, zombie movies were something of a rarity being restricted to the George Romero variety. Since then, they have become quite commonplace. But 28 Years Later applies a real sense of art to the subject even if the choices made by the characters often make little sense. I have read that 28 Years Later is to be followed up with two sequels starting with The Bone Temple next year. So, let’s see what Danny Boyle and company have planned for us. I’ll be watching for it!

The Blazing World            3 suns

Three years ago at my first Sundance I saw a short film program that included a short called The Blazing World. It concerned a young woman who enters a door into an alternate reality. It was a most unusual film with some startling images. Now, three years later, the creator and director, Carlson Young, has returned to Sundance with her full length feature film based on the same idea. Young, who is only 30 has been quite an aficionado of classic horror movies which must have influenced much in her movie. She also stars in the movie as Margaret, a young woman who lost her twin sister in an accident when they were children. She is interested in the idea of alternate dimensions and encounters a strange man who invites her through a door to this new world. She enters with the idea that her sister may exist in this other dimension. What follows are some of the most bizarre sequences I’ve seen in the movies, much of it of a dark and decaying place with alternate versions of her parents. The movie had more form to it than the short on which it was based, but steers away from your more conventional horror movies. I’m glad I saw it, but I would recommend it only for the more hardcore horror fans. Interestingly, it was completely during the pandemic in 2020.