I Can't Stop Thinking About 28 Years Later

Kit Lazer and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Discourse

(Spoilers ahead for 28 Years Later. Do not read this if you have not seen the film.)

If you’re tempted to say something about it being the huge wiener that I can’t stop thinking about, I need you to know that the fruit of that joke is hanging lower than an Alpha’s dong.

This isn’t a post about why you should like this movie. This is a post about why I like this movie. If you’re curious.

What’s up with that ending?

I want to address everything being said about this movie as well as I can. I should also say that this is mostly a transcript of a couple of videos I made about this film. I still can’t stop thinking about it and I wanted to share my love with folks who like to read.

Firstly, if a movie is divisive that generally means that actual choices were made. It wasn’t made with 10 studio executives and test audiences pouring over every detail to make it as broadly appealing as possible. That’s a good thing.

But this movie isn’t even that divisive outside of the social media/quick-reaction-for-clicks bubble; I just want to throw that out there. Both the Critics’ and Audience scores for this movie are relatively high. Almost every single person I respect or look up to as a taste-maker in the film space at least liked this film—most of them loved it. I was shocked to see the online vitriolic reaction after I posted my first gushing review.

“This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” You’re either lying, you’ve only watched this movie and The Shawshank Redemption, or you speak in hyperbole because it plays better online. I get it, we all do it, but let’s call it what it is.

The biggest, most popular gripe I’ve seen about this movie has to do with the “ending.” I put it in quotes because it’s not even the ending. It’s the epilogue. The movie starts with a prologue, a character named Jimmy in 2002 seeing everyone he knows and loves watching Teletubbies and then being slaughtered by a horde of infected. There are some references to this character being present in this world in the main section of this movie, you can see “JIMMY” graffitied in the background or carved into bodies. In the epilogue, we see him “grown up” and now he is the boss of a crew of Teletubby ninjas.

I can see how that wouldn’t work for everyone, but that’s a very small thing in the grand scheme of this movie. It’s a narrative device called a bookend. I think it works very well to set up a future story, but if you don’t, that’s fine.

Also, I’m not from the UK so I have no context for the whole Jimmy Saville thing I’m now learning about. I can imagine if you’re from the UK you would realize immediately, “Oh no, don’t run with this crew” but also it makes sense that young Jimmy would have watched him on TV growing up and the man’s crimes, in this universe, would have never been exposed. It’s not like this character is coping well mentally.

It’s a trope, in post-apocalyptic movies, for people who experience the end of the world as children to never fully grow up as a result of that. It has been the case in this genre all the way back to A Boy and His Dog and beyond. This was too weird for you? Have you never seen a Mad Max movie? This is 28 years later, it’s going to be different than 28 Days, it would be way more egregious if it wasn’t.

The thing that bothers me is that most of the people complaining about this would love this scene if it took place after the credits and it had Cillian Murphy in it for absolutely no reason at all.

Why I loved 28 Years Later

So, why did I love this movie? The first third of this movie is in line with your expectations for this film. Jamie and Spike traverse the apocalypse, chased by infected. It’s scary, it’s tense, it’s action-packed. You feel like you’re watching The Road with more action, it’s great. Spike is growing up and he idolizes his father as much as he loves his mother, who is ill.

Then, when he gets back, he realizes that his father is a liar. He’s making up stories about their journey which is no big deal but then he sees his Dad cheat on his mother, who is dying in bed. It’s an awful awakening for him, one that we all experience. There is a day in every person’s life when they realize to their shock that their parents are mortal. They’re just as scared and confused as we are and that is terrifying.

The island of safety and security on which Spike resides is fake and the mainland, filled with terror and uncertainty, is the real world. So, he makes an emotional decision based on his fear of losing his mother and his anger at his father and sneaks away to find this mysterious doctor that could heal his mother.

This is the part that reminded me of Heart of Darkness, or more specifically it’s step-child Apocalypse Now, because we as the audience think Dr. Kelson is this absolute maniac, that’s what we’ve been told. We’re expecting Colonel Kurtz but no, another subversion of expectations, he’s sane! He’s kooky, but he’s a good guy. He has retained his humanity, in fact he sees the humanity in the infected. He lives peacefully among them, for the most part.

That’s another crazy thing this movie does: it humanizes the infected. They live and breathe and eat and drink and give birth. The baby that’s born is not infected, because children are innocent of the sins of their parents!

And sure, the infected are awful dangerous creatures, but through no fault of their own. The society that Spike comes from, however, we slowly realize is a militarized, patriarchal cult. We see the different roles in the society – hunter, watchtower, seamstress – they train the young with bows and arrows as soon as they can walk and Boyle intercuts all of this military iconography across centuries into that sequence – BOOTS BOOTS BOOTS – it’s what we always do! “We” meaning men.

This is the best men’s mental awareness month movie of all time, showing you there’s nothing worse for men’s mental health than patriarchy and nothing more necessary than a boy’s healthy relationship with his mother.

My mother died from cancer and had a very loose hold on reality for her final years of her life. It was traumatic for me. I cried like a baby throughout the entire sequence with Dr. Kelson. You’re probably thinking, “Oh, so you can just like the movie because you personally relate so much to it?”

YES!!! YES!!! THAT’S WHAT ART IS FOR!! Movies are meant to make you empathize with people in situations as far removed from you and yours as possible and then hit you in the exact center of your identity. You get this sublime moment where you feel, for a brief second, like you’re not alone, people have felt the way you feel, been through what you’re going through, many times over and survived.

I think there are two kinds of people: people who love movies, they watch lots and lots of them, and get a thrill out of being surprised—especially experiencing that feeling in a blockbuster or a franchise sequel. Then there are people who say they want unique experiences in the cinema but they’re lying to themselves. They want the same thing over and over, and they get upset when a movie is not exactly what they expected. They’re not even critiquing the movie, they’re critiquing what they thought the movie was going to be.

I have made multiple short form videos about this movie and talked about it for hours on the Streaming Things podcast, if you’re interested. I also interviewed Danny Boyle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Jodie Comer prior the film’s release.