Over two decades after their British horror masterpiece 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland return with 28 Years Later, which is out in cinemas today.
The third film in the franchise (and first of a new trilogy) follows on from 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, which the duo did not write or direct.
The sequel concluded with the British survivors abandoning the only safe zone (Canary Wharf’s District 1) on a helicopter bound for France.
However, the young lad aboard was a carrier of the Rage virus, without turning infected himself.
The film then ended with zombies sprinting toward the Eiffel Tower in Paris, leaving a cliffhanger that the apocalypse had now spread to mainland Europe.
Danny Boyle had plans back in 2007 for 28 Months Later to be set in Russia, but the film never manifested. Instead, Garland ended up writing a 28 Years Later trilogy and the first film out today starts with a massive plot hole retcon of 28 Weeks Later that’s nothing short of a deus ex machina, so he could focus on his anti-Brexit themes. After the film’s 2002 prologue, a body of text explains that the Rage virus spread to France; however, Europe managed to push it back to the island of Great Britain. Quarantining the UK, EU countries now patrol the shores, ensuring no one, dead or alive, can ever leave.
Given Boyle’s previous plans for 28 Months Later and the fact that containing a Rage virus on a land mass spanning a number of continents, it seems very unlikely that Europe could have defeated the sprinting zombies. Yet with 28 Weeks Later being canon, Garland needed a quick ghost in the machine so he could have a story about an isolated Britain nostalgic for its little Englander myths in a post-Brexit/COVID storyline. Don’t get us wrong, this writer gave 28 Years Later 5 stars and called it the best film of the year, which we stand by, but a plot hole for artistic licence is still a plot hole.
28 Years Later is out now in cinemas.