An excerpt from my script review for 28 Years Later which will be available 09/02/26:
2.) Plot Stability
Truth be told I probably should have seen or read the second installment before the third.
By skipping it, I forgot that the UK is more or less quarantined off to save the rest of the world from the Infected.
(A premise I’m not sure they flush completely out, but it seems rather unlikely it would be contained in time. A more realistic scenario is the ending of the Rise of Planet of the Apes showing the pathogen spreading across the globe via airplanes.)
But this brings up a bunch of ethical questions…
Realistically, wouldn’t the rest of the world band together and just nuke the whole island? Or islands if it spread to Ireland?
This makes more sense, as just quarantining and monitoring doesn’t seem exactly foolproof.
Second, what happens if someone like Erik were to escape?
Is Sweden going to welcome him back with open arms? Is the rest of the world going to be okay with that?
Just seems a more likely scenario would be to nuke the area and be done with it.
Maybe monitor it a bit to make sure you got everything, but if no one’s working on a cure and chalking England up as a loss, that’s asking for trouble, not to mention a complete waste of resources.
Anyway…
The story opens with an attack at a church, and a little boy running to hide.
This is a great reminder for people like yours truly of what we’re dealing with.
Now, remember we skipped right to years to show how things have progressed, particularly the small towns and outposts that are left.
People aren’t exactly flourishing, but they’re doing more than surviving.
We’re introduced to Spike, who’s a ten year old boy about to embark on his rite of passage by going outside the safety of the walls to hunt the Infected.
He does, and we get some near misses, mainly establishing the Erling Haaland of the Infected via the Alpha.
Now it’s here that I think the Cap’n took issue in his film review for 28 Years Later, in that this feels like two different stories.
One is Spike’s rite of passage. The other is Spike trying to save his mother.
For me it didn’t feel disjointed.
A little arrogant perhaps on Spike’s end being that he barely survived with his father at his side, and now he’s going to stroll through the Infected Countryside with his mother and her dementia.
The point is, I didn’t mind the sudden shift, and I get why a ten year old (even in this universe) would want to save his Mum, being that his dad was banging someone else.
The two criticisms I have are…
First, it seems really convenient that Isla can not only come in and out of her dementia when the plot needs her to, but also that she can kill an Infected without issue when her sleeping son’s life is threatened.
Second, it almost felt rushed. The second half of the script is spent trying to get to Dr. Kelson, and we do, but we only get a few brief scenes with him, then FADE OUT.
And this is getting past the fact that Isla delivers a healthy baby girl from a pregnant Infected mother…
Oh, and I guess one last thing to complain about.
I didn’t care for the ending blatantly setting up a sequel. Where are we going with it? 28 Decades Later?
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