Reviews
’28 Years Later’ Review: Boyle’s Bold Return Falls Just Short of Greatness
Sometimes, seeing a director after they’ve taken a break feels like seeing an old friend. It’s been six years roughly since we’ve seen Danny Boyle in the director’s chair, and about eight since his last truly compelling film (apologies to the Beatles centric rom-com Yesterday, but Battle of the Sexes was just more gripping). So, when the trailer for 28 Years Later came out, it really did feel like seeing an old friend. It didn’t hurt that it was backed by a very crackly and very effective recording of the ominous Rudyard Kipling poem “Boots”, a piece about a British soldier slowly going insane. The preview we got cemented the vibe of the film we were going to get: it’s decades later and the war hasn’t ended, its only changed.
28 Years Later does succeed in reuniting audiences with the filmmaker that they love, and in telling a story of war—though it’s a battle within we get for the most part, and there are some directorial caveats limiting how truly great the film can be.
A Moving Coming Of Age Through The Apocalypse
It was an easy out for 28 Years Later to become one of those embarrassing nostalgia trips riddling the theatrical landscape nowadays (threatening to play John Murphy’s classic “28 Theme” as fanfare while Cillian Murphy steps out of a bunker to remind you what film series you’re watching).
It thankfully avoids that pitfall. At least, it has so far—we still have two movies to go, which this film makes very clear in its final, and truly most insane scene.
28 Years also quietly sidesteps the failures of its very weak predecessor, 28 Weeks Later, a film that felt cartoonishly eager to capitalize on the original film’s success. Instead, this returns to its roots in actually making you feel something for its characters. The movie follows young son Spike (Alfie Williams) and grizzled father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) going on a mission beyond the walls of their isolated village on Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Mission Island.
Lindisfarne: A Unique Setting in 28 Years Later
With Lindisfarne separated from a quarantined England by a narrow causeway that sinks at high tide, the duo crosses the landbridge to go hunting on the mainland of the United Kingdom. Though it should bring them closer together, their relationship is only strained by the return as Spike insists on going back into the wild to find someone who can help his sick mother Isla (Jodie Comer).
Writer turned director turned back to writer Alex Garland has also returned with Boyle. The writer for the original 28 Days Later, here he paints an empathetic picture of a real, human conflict between Jamie and Spike. 28 Years Laterbecomes just as much a fight between tradition and the desire to break away from it as it is a fight between family members. It’s a struggle against life and death itself, with the tools not only being limited to bows and arrows.
Though the physical conflict comes from mutated virus hosts, some turned into muscular and monstrous “Alpha” infected in the years following the initial outbreak, Garland’s story of a young boy coping with the dissolution of his family, growing up, and trying to find hope in a hopeless situation is simple while still being biting in how real it can get, with a sincere and bloody coming of age story through the apocalypse being the result.
Alfie Williams and Aaron-Taylor Johnson Steal the Show
The young Alfie Williams who plays Spike is incredibly compelling in his role, depicting a real sense of anger and confusion that makes you forget he isn’t a veteran actor at points. He plays his role, a child whose inexperience is wrestling with his own determination and anger, like an expert. Likewise, Taylor-Johnson’s time onscreen as Jamie makes you really appreciate how uncomfortably real his character can get, being frustrating and sympathetic in his deeply flawed nature.
Jodie Comer has some phenomenal moments as Spike’s mother Isla, with one standout scene where her sickness has fully taken a toll on her mind. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t explore her character nearly as much as it could have, and the same can be said for Ralph Fiennes’ character, who despite being so forward in the promotional materials is not on screen nearly long enough. Ultimately, the story is brought home in spite of these weaknesses, depicted beautifully in cinematography that is nothing like what we’ve gotten from Boyle previously.
A Glut of Odd Editing Choices Blur Boyle’s Vision
The astounding directing Boyle brings to the table to depict this conflict, however, is pockmarked with truly bizarre editing choices. The use of shuddering 360 camera shots to display the infected being pierced by arrows is a small symptom of this, and can be reasoned away as a narrative decision instead of a clumsy technical exhibition. But then, these choices become more and more frequent.
A more prevalent example of these problems is the poor choice to splice in archival footage of England during wartime and medieval archers, haphazardly grafted onto pivotal moments early on in the film while our leads are out in the bloody and wide open unknown. This is also where the film decides to use that iconic audio of Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots” that made the trailer so effective, to eye-rolling results; it moves like a car breaking sharply and jerking to stop. It’s just not a narratively strong enough thread with the films weakly dispersed anti-war sentiments to justify bringing the movie to a halt so we can see these images.
An abrupt and awkwardly cut zombie attack in the final third of the film, scattered red tinted night vision shots from the infected point of view that are far and few between, and Fiennes absence makes me feel like quite a bit of material was cut from the film and reordered. And whether that material removed for time will see the light of day in a director’s cut or in a sequel means very little for the film we have at hand.
Why 28 Years Later Falls Just Short of Greatness
The fact is that 28 Years Later is a very compelling film at its core, but it is noticeably dragged down under the weight of its stylistic choices. Its potential is burdened by its editing, leaving you with a film that is thrilling and emotionally developed in the best of ways, sincere and even powerful at times, but just shy of being truly great.
In this world, few things are more mildly perturbing than leaving a film unsure of what exactly it was trying to say. At least for me. Death of the author withstanding, I like to have some grasp over what the filmmakers are trying to tell me. What is the writer saying? How is the director conveying it? What was the gaffer doing lighting the scene like that? Was it intentional, or was it just difficult angling a light there? Body Melt is one of those films.
WHAT IS BODY MELT (1993)?
Body Melt is a 1993 Australian special effects cult classic that delivers a lot of gooey and gorey deaths, but initially left me feeling ambivalent about its message. Given its efforts to nauseate are the main thing on display, there isn’t much deep conversation to be had by its characters. They’re mainly pastiches of people you would see around the neighborhood (the power walker, the doofy bachelors, the crochety old man, the young married couple, etc. etc.), and they’re treated just like that; cardboard cutout people to be cut apart.
While a horror film about a cul-de-sac being disfigured and sludged to death might seem like regular slasher fair, the villain this time around isn’t an alien with acid blood or an incredible melting man: it’s a pharmaceutical company called Vimuville, making guinea pigs out of the neighborhood and rapidly mutating them to death in the name of researching a new super drug.
Sending out free health supplements to the denizens of Pebble Court, the film is a series of loosely connected set pieces, with the throughline being Vimuville’s “vitamins” and the people who drink them to disastrous consequence (sort of like an evil wheatgrass shot, or Herbalife shakes if they made your spleen explode out of your chest).
INCREDIBLE EFFECTS ABOUND, COURTESY OF BOB CARRON
What results is a cartoonish splatter film, amplified in its grotesqueries by the effects of Bob Carron, an Australian special effects legend. If you need to know his street cred, fans of more obscure animal horror will know his biggest and boar-iest creation, the titular pig monster from Razorback.
More likely you know him for helping to make the human battery scene from The Matrix, where a tube-fed catatonic Neo is awakened in a pod of viscous red goo. He’s also the man who helped do prosthetic application on the set of an early Peter Jackson classic Braindead, which was made only a year before Body Melt. Given how notoriously explosive the blood sprays and zombie deaths were in Braindead, there’s some definite creative crossover between the two.
His work here on Body Melt, like on Braindead, probably wouldn’t play well in most movies. It is excessive and absurd, with meaty melting tentacles and body fluid spraying demises. Imagine the defibrillator scene from The Thing, but repeatedly over roughly 80 minutes. People get inverted, imploded, and expanded, and then it happens again. And again. And again. And if it seems like I just keep talking about how insane the effects are, that’s because that’s really its main move; Body Melt is a circus of completely bad taste endings for each of its stars.
It’s Itchy and Scratchy’s idea of a public safety advertisement about checking with your doctor before taking a new medication. Ultimately, the story is sparse; you’re here to see Carron flex his skills with liquid latex and mixtures of lubricant and corn syrup. Which is quite fine, the movie is worth watching just for that. However, those looking for more than a highlight reel of splatter movie kills will be disappointed, and rightfully so.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN? (WHEN YOU BLOW UP YOUR SPLEEN?)
Which leads to the primary question that had me wrestling with how I would talk about the film: can a film be too irreverent to send a message? What is the goal here? I plumbed Australian pharmaceutical history to try and see if there was some sort of contemporary counterpart to events in the film, any inspiration that tracked.
The closest I could find was Australia’s slow and lacking response to the thalidomide scandals of the 1950s and 60s, but the ties were tenuous at best. The film’s goal of being a pitch-black horror comedy, mainly meant to skewer the fitness crazes of the 80s and 90s, are subsumed by its technical achievements in making the audience sickly with slime, and leave you mostly numb to the horrific things that happen in it.
I think on a rewatch, the film’s philosophy was made clear by that numbness. As the vitamins take their last victim during a shootout– I won’t spoil how it happens, but I will spoil the reaction its witnesses have: being rapidly underwhelmed. It was at that moment that I realized what I feel is the real approach of the film. Body Melt does not try to convey a message about bioethics, but rather an approach to violations of bioethics. An approach, albeit a passive one to living with corrupt companies and the exploitation of people for profits.
AN ODDLY EXPERT SATIRE OF OUR APPROACH TO FEAR
Body Melt is a satire that plays in excess to make a point about how people become inured to the horrors they’re exposed to. In a surprisingly smart way, Body Melt becomes an absurdist shrug towards being turned into a lab rat, a rising and ever-related fear as companies push to gain ever increasing powers to skirt consequences for violating laws and human rights. When companies hide behind dozens of proxies of legal protection and walls of money to surround themselves, how do you keep from going insane as they mistreat swathes of the population and force you to watch? You sort of just learn to live with it.
And as bleak of an idea as it is, Body Melt’s ultimate dark humor stems from this. The joke is ultimately on the viewer; it mocks our own ability to turn a blind eye to them, turning the experiment gone wrong into an uncomfortable laugh through its extreme execution.
“How silly. That wouldn’t happen to us! Someone would stop them!”
“…Right?”
Body Melt is streaming on Shudder.
The film forums, threads, and pages I follow have recently been abuzz with talk about a film called Tesis. Usually, when older films are hyped out of nowhere, it means a new physical release is coming, or a new cut of the film has been assembled. To my surprise, Tesis returned to the conversation when Shudder released it just a few weeks ago. It should be noted that discussions around Tesis probably started when Umbrella Home Entertainment released a gorgeous collection around October of 2024. Still, I hadn’t seen much talk about it until its Shudder release. Does the movie hold up to the hype? The title of this piece might just give it away…
Tesis follows Ángela Márquez (Ana Torrent), a student working on her thesis project on audiovisual violence. Professor Figueroa (Miguel Picazo) and fellow student Chema (Fele Martínez) assist Ángela with finding gnarly films to further her studies. Ángela finds her professor dead in one of their university’s screening rooms. She takes the tape he was watching when he died and watches it with Chema. They soon realize the subject of the tape is none other than Vanessa (Olga Margallo), a student who went missing from campus roughly two years ago. After subsequent viewings, Ángela and Chema realize the tape they’re watching isn’t a film…it’s a snuff tape.
Comparing Tesis to A Serbian Film
Personally, I would never recommend A Serbian Film to anyone. And it’s not because the subject matter is “too offensive” but because it’s not a good film. Even though it deserves to be on disturbing movie lists, there’s little substance to it other than the political commentary that lightly shades the film in a positive light. Tesis is a film I would recommend to someone looking for a Serbian Film-like film. It may not have the same amount of gratuitous blood, violence, and sex that Serbian does, but it does not fail at being disturbing, raw, and well-made.
Besides Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, there is very little modern media set around snuff in general. Alejandro Amenábar’s feature directorial debut broke the mold of good taste with this 1996 instant classic. Amenábar’s freshman film tackles not just the idea of snuff within the genre, but the human condition and how violence in media affects everyone differently. Ángela is fascinated from an educational standpoint, while Chema is more enthralled in a way that feels a bit too personal. Each character approaches the idea of snuff/ultraviolence in their own unique way that feels more personal than anything Schumacher attempted to do in 8MM.
Ana Torrent’s Pivotal Performance
Much of Tesis is more akin to a murder mystery, with Ángela thrust into the middle of this murderous game of cat and mouse. For a debut script, Amenábar finds impressive ways to keep the twists and turns coming without anything feeling forced or over the top. Each piece of information the viewer gets makes them feel like they know how it will end, until they get the next piece of information. The script feels like it could have only come from a seasoned professional. It’s almost as twisty as David Fincher’s The Game, only with a much better payoff.
Tesis Deserves More Recognition
Paranormal Investigator Tragically Passes on Tour with Infamous Annabelle Doll
‘Body Melt’ Review: An Irreverent Approach to Body Horror
‘The Trouble with Tessa’, Screambox Original Premieres TODAY
Fantasia International Film Festival 2025 Serves a Jam Packed Menu for Genre Fans
‘Tesis’ Review: A 90s Hidden Gem
Mark Duplass and More Added to Cast of A24’s ‘The Backrooms’
‘Terrifier’ Takes Orlando: Halloween Horror Nights 2025
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’: And the Impact of Slasher Sequel Trends
FANGORIA Releases 2025 Chainsaw Award Nominees
The ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Franchise, Ranked
‘The People Under the Stairs’ Review: A Brilliantly Bizarre Undercover Horror Classic
Glen and Glenda: Don Mancini’s Reverence for Queerness in ‘Seed of Chucky’ (2004)
Slappy Was the Blueprint: How the Dummy from Goosebumps Became A Horror Icon
‘Truth or Dare’: Who Did it Best?
HORROR 101: Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Story of William Afton Explained
[REVIEW] ‘Cherry Falls’ (1999) Brittany Murphy Shines in This Cult Classic Slasher
Mia from ‘Evil Dead’ – A New Kind of Final Girl
This Is What Makes Sue Ann from ‘Ma’ a Terrifying Yet Loveable Horror Villain
The 11 Most Disturbing Horror Movies Ever, According to an Actual Horror Fan
