Trojan Horsing Brilliance: Why '28 Years Later' Is One of the Best Movies Of The Year
#325: "28 Years Later," "California King," "Grand Prix," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"
Edition 325:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: A zombie movie that’s so much more than that, and one of the best movies of the year. Plus, I randomly discovered a fun indie directed by a guy in his mid-20s, and watched the movie that the new F1 movie hopes it can be. And the Summer of Potter continues! In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Channing Tatum lives in a Toys ‘R’ Us.
28 Years Later
In a lot of ways, success in Hollywood is defined by how much independence you can conjure as a creative. Those at the very top of the proverbial food chain the people who write, produce and direct material that is unmistakably theirs — think Chris Nolan, Quentin Tarintino, etc.—reinforcing that reputation of the long wolf auteur alpha.
But the truth is that some creatives are just better together. I’m thinking of Paul Schrader and Martin Scorcese, Scott Frank and Steven Soderbergh, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher (as Sorkin will find out as he tries to develop The Social Network 2 solo) … or Danny Boyle and Alex Garland.
With respect to their individual efforts (Boyle the director of Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours and newsletter favorite Steve Jobs; Garland the writer/director of Ex Machina, Annihilation and Civil War), it’s the combination of the two that gave us the genre re-defining 28 Days Later in 2002, a film that popularized “fast zombies” and inspired a new wave of living dead content over the next decade, like “The Last of Us” videogame, the “World War Z” book, Shaun of the Dead and even Zombieland.
The duo reunited their significant talents for 28 Years Later, not so much as a continuation of a franchise but rather a revisiting of the themes they used a worldwide infection to explore.
To that end, the lore of 28 Weeks Later, the 2007 sequel in which Boyle/Garland were not creatively involved, has been totally cast aside. The infection has not spread outside of the U.K. to Europe, and infected don’t die of starvation every few months. In this world, the island has been quarantined off from the world for 28 years and those that remain have been left to die…or fend for themselves.
It seems quite clear that as much as the 2002 original was a reflection on a post 9/11 world in which a sudden devastation can shake the foundations of the world and rob the world of its sense of safety, this 2025 follow-up is a comment on Brexit and the effects of isolationism.
Our protagonist, a 13-year-old boy, knows no life before the infection. He lives on an island off the coast of mainland England (two levels of isolation), but sets off with his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on a coming-of-age ritual to go to the mainland and kill his first infected (intentionally, the word “zombie” is not used in this movie except once, by a Swedish character who has lived with the past 20 years of pop culture).
What unfolds is a narrative that not only satisfies the expectations of a cool zombie movie, up to and including extremely gnarly kills (on both sides), but also provides something much deeper and more soulful. It’s about a boy’s relationship with his father as he matures, even more about that boy’s relationship with his ailing mother and ultimately about his relationship with death, both natural and unnatural.
This movie pulls off a clever sleight of hand in its marketing, putting Taylor-Johnson front and center for something more macho and down the middle, but Jodie Comer is easily a bigger part of the movie and excels in the kind of mentally unstable character that would in less capable hands become cartoonish (Comer continues to be one of my favorite actors working today, full stop).
All that, and yet it’s Ralph Fiennes who steals the movie as the seemingly coocoo doctor who lives alone in the forest and collects dead bodies, yet ultimately brings the emotional climax into sharp focus.
28 Years Later really proves exactly the lengths someone must go to trojan horse a good movie through the studio system for wide release. It’s part of a franchise, wink wink, even though the last movie was 18 years ago and they pretended like it didn’t exist and there’s zero references to either previous movie in this one. It was marketed as a hard genre movie, with horror and zombies, to activate one of the few audiences that still comes out consistently to theaters.
That packaging is for the birds. This is actually just a great example of top notch filmmaking and storytelling, thrilling and emotional and resonant. I found myself even forgiving the obvious bridge to further sequels at the end…that’s how much I liked it.
In my very first edition of 2025 movie rankings just updated on Letterboxd, I put this movie No. 2, behind Sinners. And it’s going to be a tough out to not be in my top 10 at the end of the year. Go support movies like this one!!
Something New
California King (Hulu): I’ve done a lot less spontaneous discovery this year than in the past couple, which means I’ve saved myself from a lot of mediocre streamers but also closed the door on the joy of a surprising discovery such as this—a 1hr26min streaming gem.
Firs time writer/director Eli Stern was 24 years old when he shot this movie, assembling some recognizable faces in Travis Bennett (“Dave”), Jimmy Tatro (an early YouTube star turned comedy actor), Victoria Justice (“Zoey 101”) and Joel McHale (“Community”) for a quirky story about a small town mattress store owner who tries to pull a fake kidnapping to win his crush’s heart.
The movie is clever in the very particular screenwriter-y way, not quite funny enough to be laugh out loud funny and slightly sweaty in its pursuit of those laugh but nonetheless enjoyable from start to finish and legitimately impressive plotting (its big twist got me). It is quite obviously a product of Stern’s influences, like Steven Soderbergh in how it unspooled its mystery, Coen Brothers in its colorful supporting characters, and even a little Wes Anderson in its adolescent fun.
Overall I really really liked this movie, enough to stash it inside my initial top 10 rankings. Though it’ll likely fall out, Stern is a name to definitely keep an eye on.
Something Old
Grand Prix (1966): For those of you heading out to see F1 this weekend—I’ve got tickets for a 9:45 a.m. IMAX screening!—you might be interested to know this isn’t the first movie about Formula One to feature real drivers and real race footage…and to my surprise, not even the first to attach cameras to the car to show the action up close!
Grand Prix is one of those true meandering ensemble movies popular in the 1960s and 70s, focusing on a handful of drivers and their lives on and off the track. What’s interesting, in contrast to F1, is how much less commercial the sport used to be, and of course how much more dangerous it was. Back then, it truly felt like every time you strapped into an F1 car your life was on the line.
The racing action in this movie is impressive today, and I’m sure downright mind-blowing by 1966 standards, directed by the great John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Reindeer Games). In many ways it successfully pulled off what the 2025 version is trying to do, which is immersion into the world of high-octane action.
Something To Stream
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Max): My “Summer of Potter” continues! Unlike the first book (~300 pages) and second book (~340 pages), the strains of adaptation were far more obvious with JK Rowling’s third novel, needing different cuts and crams to fit ~450 pages worth of material into 2hr25min (I’m currently reading book four and it’s ~750 pages so I have no idea how that will whittle down to 2.5 hours).
And here’s the thing about that adaptation—done this time by Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Gravity, Roma, Y tu mama tambien)—it makes it better!!
My ongoing theory after reading these books and watching these movies for the first time, and having many conversations with friends about their HP memories, is that the lionshare of what people remember and love about Harry Potter actually comes from the movies and not the books (even if they read them all). A second set of eyes…and edits…on the story that weaves through Rowling’s incredibly rich world is helpful, and all of the biggest moments are more memorable on screen. Stay tuned for further updates!!
Trailer Watch: Roofman
Based on a true story, Channing Tatum is an escaped convict hiding out in a Toys ‘R’ Us? Sounds like a joke, but writer/director Derek Cianfrance made Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond The Pines, so this comedy is going to have some teeth. And what an incredible cast around him — Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage, and LaKeith Stanfield! This has quickly become one of my most anticipated movies of the entire year.