Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B

There is a lot that makes 28 Days Later stand apart from its two predecessors, the breakthrough 28 Days Later from 2002, which was a watershed moment for zombies (they’re fast now!) as well as the horror genre overall; and 28 Weeks Later from 2007, which was arguably even better. Now, 18 years after the last film, 28 Years Later does some surprisingly deft genre blending, easing into some dramatic territory, and it’s something I really respect. I will also be very up front about this, though: this film just isn’t as good as the previous two.

It does make one wonder, though, how anyone going in blind to this film might digest it, with none of the baggage of films that changed cinema history in mind. It’s certainly not critical to understanding what’s going on in this story, especially since, as all of these movies do, it opens in flashback to the outbreak of the “Rage” virus (a term I don’t recall any character saying in this film, come to think of it). In this case, we are introduced to a young boy who narrowly escapes the “infected.” The character shows up again in the very last scene of the film, serving as narrative bookends—neither of which land especially well. The rest of the movie in between is far better.

I really must say something more about that final scene. I won’t spoil what happens, except to say that the character has become someone I think of now as “Parkour Altar Boy.” If you think that sounds painfully corny and stupid, you would be right. Indeed, the scene offers a tonal turn that makes no sense whatsoever, and left me just thinking: What the fuck is this? Truly, my overall opinion of this film would be higher if not for that one scene, which truly knocked the entire enterprise down a peg, and has the unfortunate distinction of serving as its final note.

After we flash-forward from the opening sequence, to 28 years later, and until that closing scene, the characters we follow are entirely unrelated: Alfie Williams is excellent in his feature film debut as Spike, the 12-year-old embarking on a rite of passage in his isolated, island community. After decades of the entire island of Great Britain being under strict quarantine—anyone who steps foot on it is not allowed to leave—a smaller island has sustained a community that sporadically ventures to the mainland via a heavily fortified tidal causeway. Spike is now being escorted by his dad, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), to the mainland to experience his first kills of infected.

Here we already arrive at Nitpick Corner. I rewatched the previous two films in recent weeks to prepare for this new release, and my biggest complaint about both films was the astonishingly stupid decisions the characters kept making. To 28 Years Later’s credit, there’s not nearly as much of that, as there is far more logic to character behavior this time around—which also allows for a pretty funny sequence in which a shipwrecked Swedish soldier (Edvin Ryding) tries to explain to a confused Spike what life in his home country, which is clearly just like ours in the real world today, is like. Not only has Spike never seen a smartphone, he doesn’t even know what a radio is (although that seems implausible). There remains a lot of unanswered questions, such as the first film’s establishment of the ability to starve infected to death, and yet now the infected seem to be thriving.

They also seem to have adapted and evolved, in some cases in very odd ways. The trailer to 28 Years Later is cut to suggest there are now giant swamp-monster infected, as well as a possibly sinister psycho played by Ralph Fiennes. Both suggestions are very misleading, and the “exciting twist” of this third installment isn’t so much a new direction with “fast zombies” as a new population of slow, bloated zombies that look like giant baby dolls that just dug themselves out of their own graves. Also they love to eat earthworms (or shoelaces, in a pinch).

I suspected at first that Spike and Jamie would get stuck on the mainland and have to fend for themselves, maybe survive and maybe not, for the entire movie. They do make it back to the island, albeit barely—thanks to a beautifully shot, harrowing nighttime sequence in which they barely escape a giant one of the infected. (Who is naked, by the way, as are all the infected in this movie. You’ve never seen so much zombie dong.) But, Spike also has a mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), who is clearly unwell with increasingly frequent spells of confusion, in a community with no doctors. When Spike learns there is a doctor not far away on the mainland, he slips Isla across the causeway in search of the doctor, even though Jamie insists he’s insane.

Dr. Kelson is indeed a nut, weirdly obsessed with death and collecting human bones and skulls to fashion into giant towers. He’s had a lot of time on his hands, I guess. Anyway, of course Kelson is not quite what he seems. Ralph Fiennes plays Kelson in a way that injects 28 Years Later with a welcome new energy, although he’s really only present in roughly the final third. The narrative shifts from focusing on Spike’s relationship with his father to that with his mother, and eventually there are people in the theater audibly sniffling. “Horror tearjerker” was a new direction I was not expecting.

Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland worked together on 28 Days Later in 2002, and they re-team here, to mostly satisfying success. “Mostly” is the operative word there. They bring welcome new ideas to the franchise, most notably that death can be beautiful even in a post-apocaplyptic world. Maybe not fully fleshed out, but whatever. A whole lot of 28 Years Later is uniquely compelling. I just wish it didn’t end with a narrative choice that was utterly baffling.

*Here we are, guests of a very stable and very normal person.*

Overall: B