28 Years Later and infected are still running rampant, this time some of them are fat!

Photo by Courtesy of Sony - © Sony

When a franchise is ultimately revisited despite lying stagnant for more than two decades after the inaugural feature, it inevitably raises the question of what exactly is trying to be achieved. The dawn of an endless cinematic universe? Or perhaps an all-revealing prequel? 28 years later proves to be neither, and instead lays the groundwork for a thrilling, if not frightfully disturbing, trilogy. Britain's rage-fuelled infected have made a return, and this time with a thickened diversity of shapes and sizes, how many calories are in a worm?!

The first portion of the film is a juxtaposing combination of wholesome family bonding and a degree of graphic violence designed to escalate the shock factor. And shock it does, especially when paired with some unsettling fragments of found footage-esque video. The story flags a little initially, instead making room for the introduction of the newfound infected, it isn't until the audience has encountered the full extent of what the mainland has to offer that an objective is established.

It's difficult to discuss 28 years later without touching on the impact of its first trailer, garnering nearly 30 million views on YouTube alone. The driving force behind its success has to have been the unconventional audio, a chilling narration of the 1903 poem Boots, which elicits an unwavering sense of panic alongside frightening imagery extracted from the film with little explanation, further exemplifying the terror. It was refreshing to see the poem reused in the film, although not with quite the same impact, as repurposing teaser audio tends to be less conventional.

Pleasingly, the film retains some of the gritty cinematography utilised previously in the franchise, though it's obviously not designed to reflect pre-2010 this time. Frequent cuts and jolty angle changes all contribute to the build up of both disorientation and tension, prominent themes throughout the feature. It was also gratifying to see a few fleeting moments of humour break up events, it was tough not to draw a comparison to the whole 'things that would put a Victorian child into a coma' saga.

Commenting on narrative choices is tricky when you're anticipating more depth to be added to the plot in the coming films, but for the most part the story lacked some complexity. That's not to undermine the emotional connection established between characters, what we saw between Spike (Alfie Williams) and Jodie Comer's Isla was especially moving, but it felt as though the focus was on stunning the audience with gore and then lulling them with sentimentality with little concrete matter in between.

What the film undoubtedly achieved was setting up the events of the next, between the clues scattered throughout and the complete tonal shift of the finale, 28 years and a little bit longer later (an educated guess) has plenty of potential, especially after confirmation that we see the return of Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a character whose motives were not thoroughly dissected. Regardless of what might be in store next, 28 years later is a gripping introduction to this new era of infected, and well worth a watch (provided you can stomach a virus film after Covid).