Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 28 Years Later

 The third in the 28 installment ... having loved 28 Days Later and liked 28 Weeks Later quite well, to say that I was looking forward to Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later was an understatement.  Now, having watched it, was it worth the wait?  I think so, but I also can understand the ire I've seen from viewers who were expecting more of the same from the "rage zombie" situation.

Synopsis: Twenty-eight years after Londoners unwittingly unleashed the rage virus on an unsuspecting Great Britain, the world has managed to contain the virus to the British Isles.  Great Britain is under quarantine, its surrounding waters surrounded by other country's navies.  No one is allowed off the British Isles and the denizens have been left to fend for themselves.  The residents of Holy Island are doing better than most: connected to the mainland by a causeway that is only accessible at low tide, with deadly rip currents otherwise, the folk there are doing okay, in a just-above-medieval lifestyle sort of way.  (They are a little weird religously but understandable.)  They do have a tradition of sending youth to the mainland when they are 14-15, to learn to kill the infected.  

Young Spike, age 12, is old for his age in many ways (dealing with a sick mum); his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, unrecognizable) takes him over for his field trip.  Spike successfully kills a couple of slow ones (fat, sluglike, crawling on their bellies) but gets overwhelmed by the fast ones (the regular rage zombies) and both he and his dad are chased back to their island by an "alpha" - bigger, stronger and slightly smarter than the other infected.  Back home, however, his mum (Jodie Comer) is worse and Spike devises a plan to sneak back to the mainland with her to confer with a nearby crazy doctor (Ralph Fiennes).

Are there gross and scary rage zombies?  Yes.  Does the alpha like to pull the heads off of people and animals?  Yes.  Was I at ever time scared of the infected or worried that our heroes might not make it?  No, not at all.  27YL is not actually scary.  It's more like an Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz journey for Spike and his mum, wandering through beautiful landscapes and meeting really weird and/or dangerous people.  I loved it, although it isn't the zombie movie that most people were expecting.  And the very ending fell a little flat, as it is clearly setting things up for the next film.  But this was not what I thought I was going to be seeing and I appreciated it all the more for that.