It’s fair to say that at the end of the world, God – like our Government, NATO and the UN – has forsaken us poor Brits. It doesn’t stop Him having an effect though, whether through Dr Kelson’s cleansing of the dead or Sir Jimmy Crystal’s warped cult. And really, being abandoned by our leaders, solid or supernatural, is business as usual for us on this sceptered isle.
This apparent lack of concern for ordinary people is of course at odds with how governments like to tell us they act; witness the use of Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film Henry V throughout 28 Years Later, a movie made to bolster troop morale in WW2 based on a Shakespeare play about a great English leader.
Still, that abandonment goes both ways. It has made us into a somewhat stoic people, suspicious and mocking of government. We are used to having to get on with it (our preferred parenting method being benign neglect), which incidentally makes our general mockery of anyone caught actually prepping rather perplexing (300 cans of Stella is not prepping by the way, just a “might have a BBQ later” top up shop).
Abandonment
This is one of the main themes in 28 Years Later: whether a people left to flounder by God and Government, or children left to grow up on their own when their parents are killed. That abandonment is like a ring in a tree trunk, never to be expunged and unsurprisingly leaving survivors damaged, suspicious, and more likely to look inwards than outwards.
It takes extreme mental strength to hold on to ideas from within yourself about looking outwards when the stranger, infected or not, wants to kill you and your own community tell you there will be no rescue should you get into trouble; Dr Kelson is able to do it not just because of his own character but also because of practicalities such as his access to morphine and iodine. Plus, of course, he exists alone, outside of other influences.
Meanwhile the Jimmys, however terrible they turn out to be in the next film, have probably grown up without parents and had to make their way in a supremely dangerous world. Abandoned by adults, even if these children have initially tried to live by a moral code, without a guiding hand it will have been like a photocopy of a photocopy of a torn corner of a blueprint, getting more blurred and less readable with each year that passes.
The virus has been contained elsewhere and it’s only the UK where it has run rampant. It’s a comment on how little our institutions care about ordinary people, and it’s always been like that. During the Cold War, as the prospect of nuclear war loomed, some countries got community fallout shelters. We got a pamphlet telling us how to nuclear-proof a corner of the living room for the family to hide in for two weeks.
Our institutions have also liked to hide behind “the wrong kind of” as an excuse for lack of preparedness, from British Rail complaining about the wrong kind of snow when the trains stopped to COVID as not the virus they had prepared for.
Rage too is presumably the wrong type of infection. If only it had been an outbreak of rabies, quicksand or spontaneous human combustion then Britain’s Gen X-ers would have sorted it out in the time it takes to listen to the 12″ of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes.
Religion and isolationism
Christian churches are a recurring theme. The Church of England and, over the border, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland are established churches by law, so that’s not surprising at what looks like the end of the world, especially when religion has been found wanting. That Christianity is used as a pawn between warring political and social factions in the UK also fits with 28 Years Later‘s ideas about what we remember, and how, depending on how useful it is to us.
Additionally churches, in the past, offered legal sanctuary, an idea that still has some moral sway even if no legal standing any more. In 28 Days Later, Jim, newly woken from his coma, enters what he thinks is a deserted church; it is not, and the infected vicar tries to attack him. Then at the start of 28 Years Later, little Jimmy rushes to his local church where his father is the minister, hoping for salvation from a parent who loves him (his mother has already been killed or infected by the attacking hordes) only to find that his father is already crazed without even being infected yet – joyous that the foretold end is indeed nigh. (We even see Jimmy, hiding, holding his dad’s crucifix, repeating “Why hast thou forsaken me?”, spoken by Jesus on the cross to his father God.)
But there’s a lot more going on than “just” obvious symbols such as churches losing their age-old sanctuary status.
Much has been made of the allegories with BREXIT and isolationism in 28 Years Later, as the survivors live on an island from which Christianity was spread. It’s very telling that in the note Spike leaves for his father, tucked in with the baby in a bucket left at the community gates, he states he is going inland so he can no longer see the sea, which is a constant reminder of the literal clear blue water between survivors on the island and the infected and other survivors on the mainland.
Jamie and Spike in front of the Lindisfarne fortifications – their own version of a Memento Mori?
There is a natural disconnect between Christianity and isolationism – something Garland and Boyle exploit as Spike moves from frightened separatist tiptoeing through the mainland to, if not a missionary, at least a pilgrim, striding out alone into the interior. Christianity is a proselytising religion, going out and looking for converts, often at great personal cost. Just look at all those martyrs, often killed in the most hideous ways. That Spike then meets Sir Jimmy Crystal, leader of a quasi cult (who is now wearing his father’s crucifix upside down) again shows how ideals become twisted, eventually ending up the opposite of what they should be.
(There’s an irony too that in Britain Christianity established itself partly by taking over important, mystical sites from pre-Christian religions, and reworking them for their own churches and beliefs; it’s easier to get ordinary people to convert that way.)
We also see the Angel of the North, a giant metal sculpture that has since 1998 soared above Gateshead in the North East greeting people as they arrive or drive/train through the area. The twin symbols are obvious; a dead sculpture which previously inspired, protected and welcomed people in a now-forsaken country, or a defiantly rising memory of the past and hope for the future for people to hold on to.
History and memory
28 Years Later shows us that how we view the past is affected not just by what we choose to take with us from what we know, but also what communities and institutions present to us as “the truth”. Only Dr Kelson and Isla have actually held on to accurate remembrance, and she is terminally ill while he is deemed mad.
She talks to Spike of her memories of her childhood (visiting the Angel of the North) but thinks he is her father, as she relives those days in her mind. Kelson (a scientist) has still managed to hold on to ideals of ceremony, and the rituals of death that we are often accused of forgetting, but which have traditionally helped us add context while we memorialise, grieve and move on.
Spike is greatly affected by Dr Kelson, who honours the infected and non-infected without judgement, and literally uses fire to cleanse them (a common idea from religious and ancient cultures). His determination to see the humanity in every dead body, whether infected or not, continues even after they have been stripped of their flesh and skin, and are down to their bare bones, by which time the infected and non-infected are once again all the same.
Kelson has preserved the ways of the past while also preserving their true meaning, which in post-infected Britain makes him a rarity. He is also very accessible once people get over their suspicion of him, delighting in explaining his mememto mori and exhorting Spike to also remember he must love – memento amori. He wants to pass these ideals on and sends Spike home, with the baby they take from the infected, confident the boy will carry them with him.
Spike, Isla, the baby and Dr Kelson at the Memento Mori
The Jimmys have taken as their style inspiration TV presenter and DJ Jimmy Savile, who after his death he was found to have been an extraordinarily prolific sexual predator. He died in real life after the date of society’s collapse in this franchise, and though rumours had been swirling for decades before that one assumes the Jimmys would have been too young to be aware. They have taken the clothes, jewellery and hair that made Savile stand out and wear it as an anti-hero uniform as they fight their way through the infected. Being children (or not born) when the infection began they have been growing up without parental influence to anchor them, and have taken their icons and beliefs where they could find them; or they have come across the worst of men who have influenced them in all the wrong ways. Whatever, they have ended up honouring entirely the wrong person in an effort to create community and survive.
The ending to 28 Years Later
Odd though it may seem after the emotional intensity of Isla’s death – and it’s an ending that has caused controversy, and also bewilderment – because of the themes and ideas seeded into the film everything has led to this point. It is the counterpoint to Dr Kelson, and a warning about the fragility and fakery of society if you look at history through a warped eye.
I was wondering how people outside the UK would look on the final scenes, when Spike, outnumbered on his quest by a crowd of fast infected and his escape blocked by a boulder-strewn dead end, is rescued by a team of tracksuit-wearing, bleach-haired, gold jewellery-bedecked men and women.
Their main inspiration does look to be Jimmy Savile, who bestrode UK light entertainment in the 70s and 80s wearing just those outfits. I don’t think Savile is the only influence here, though using him demonstrates how society will make antiheroes of evil people, especially the further we get from their crimes; and here the infection has provided a massive disconnect with normal life that went on before.
There are also shades of A Clockwork Orange in the Jimmys, and also the spooky blond children from The Village of The Damned. (The Midwich Cuckoos, on which the latter was based, was written by John Wyndham who also wrote The Day of the Triffids, an acknowledged influence on 28 Days Later: man wakes up in hospital to find a meteor shower has blinded the population and giant aggressive plants have taken over.)
The future – what now for Britain, Spike, Jimmy and baby Isla?
The 28… films are about the past and the present, as without the march of progress the future stops being a thing. You just exist, telling misremembered stories of the past to help you stay alive now. That is not entirely a criticism as these survivor villages have also rediscovered craftsmanship and community, and really how many of us in that situation would be a Dr Kelson? However they are treading water.
And it is telling that it is among the infected, as viruses can quickly mutate, that change is happening, changes that will shape the British future. A baby (who Spike calls Isla) is born to an infected woman but appears not to be infected herself. What does that mean for the uninfected children born to the infected? Will they grow up at all and if they do will they be feral or will they be able to bring some kind of societal order to the raging masses? And will it set up a conflict with the Alphas, who are strong and fast, and brighter than most, but are still slaves to their infection; Samson cannot recognise that Dr Kelson would actually help him, for example. (While I think we would all, in that moment, try to rescue that baby – we don’t know if the infected can parent or if other uninfected babies have been born this way – that Spike takes little Isla from her “family” to a more suitable environment in which to be brought up calls back to our own history.)
As for Spike: he has been greatly affected by Dr Kelson, who has kept hold of his ideals from before the infection and has now found another way to live by them. But he is also very vulnerable and still grieving for his mother when, within just four weeks, he meets the Jimmys. In that first meeting he is literally looking up to the dazzling “Sir Jimmy Crystal” when he appears, fingers wreathed in gold rings, as he and his team set about destroying the surge of infected with a series of ninja moves. Which “side” will win Spike?
We know Jimmy Crystal plays a big role in the next film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is due for release in January 2026. We also know that Original Jim appears at the end of that film, and will then play a significant role in the next. Where has he been? Was he rescued with Selena and Hannah and then came back for some reason? Or did the virus reassert itself before help could arrive?
As for external forces, maybe the UN and NATO will finally come in and clear the country. Perhaps companies will send in mercenaries to do the same job, but for their own ends. You can imagine Britain as a horror theme park for extreme tourists or indeed those urban explorer YouTubers sneaking in and getting into trouble. And why hasn’t anyone tried to weaponise the infected? Alien came out long before the Rage virus appeared!
Perhaps, of course, those things are already happening, the survivor communities and the infected just don’t know it yet.
Whatever, I feel sure Britain’s population will be an afterthought in any decision!
READ MORE:
28 Years Later: my 5-star review
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