28 Years Later writer Alex Garland has revealed the one common misconception about the horror movie.
The third installment of the gory franchise was released in the UK on Friday, June 20, to much fanfare after critics described the movie as ‘terrifying and electrifying’.
Featuring a star-studded cast including Harry Potter actor Ralph Fiennes, 62, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 35, 28 Years Later sees Alex and director Danny Boyle reunite to an incredible effect.
Their partnership first blossomed more than two decades ago with the series’ opener 28 Days Later, starring then little-known Cillian Murphy, 49, as bicycle courier Jim, who had awoken from a coma to discover a deadly virus had taken over London.
Though zombie-like in their appearance, Alex, 55, has now insisted that the creatures are not zombies at all, correcting the widespread misconception.
Speaking to Polygon about how they portrayed the infected in their new film, Alex said: ‘One (option) is: there aren’t any infected left and life has gone back to normal, so that would be one sort of film you could do, sort of post-COVD film as it were.
28 Years Later writer Alex Garland, 55, has revealed the one common misconception about the franchise
Danny Boyle (left), 68, and Alex assembled a star-studded cast for their new endeavour including Aaron Taylor-Johnson (pictured), 35
Despite the franchise long being dubbed a ‘zombie-horror’, its writer has repeatedly fought against the movie being included in such a genre
‘And the other is: no, the infection is still alive. Well, how could it still be alive?
‘These are not reanimated dead people by some sort of supernatural means. They’re people who have an illness or a condition or a virus, in this case, and so, how are they still alive? They need to consume energy, they need to drink.’
Despite the franchise long being dubbed a ‘zombie-horror’, its writer has repeatedly fought against the movie being included in such a genre.
It has been speculated that Alex’s refusal to admit the franchise includes zombies was for fears of it being included in a genre of films considered ‘low-brow’.
And the star of the first film, Cillian, 49, agreed with Alex while speaking during the filming of SAG-AFTRA’s Foundation’s Conversation programme last year.
‘I wasn’t too aware we were making a zombie move, to be honest with you,’ the Peaky Blinders frontman said.
‘It was right around the time Sars happened and there was all this ”air rage” stuff going on.’
Whether zombies or just infected humans, the inclusion of the terrifying figures in 28 Years Later certainly caused a problem while filming the movie.
Cillian Murphy (pictured), who starred as Jim in the first movie, said he didn’t realise 28 Days Later was a zombie film
‘These are not reanimated dead people by some sort of supernatural means. They’re people who have an illness or a condition or a virus, in this case,’ Garland said
Director Danny Boyle revealed they needed to take extra care not to have ‘naked’ actors on the set because they had strict rules in place to protect the film’s child star, Alfie Williams.
He told PEOPLE: ‘I mean, if you’re recently infected (with the virus), you’d have some clothes, but if you’ve been infected for a long time, the clothes would just disintegrate with the way that you behave.
‘We never knew that (about rules governing nudity on set when there’s a child present) going in, it was a nightmare.’
In order to still film scenes featuring naked zombies while adhering to the safeguarding rules, Danny revealed the actors had to wear prosthetics.
‘Interestingly, because there was a 12-year-old boy on set, you’re not allowed for anybody to be naked, not really naked, so they look naked, but it’s all prosthetics,’ he added.
‘So it’s like: “Oh my God,” so we had to make everybody prosthetic genitals.’
The 28 Years Later mastermind said he was keen to push boundaries with the elements of nudity and gore in the film and he’s glad studio bosses were supportive of his plans.
He told Variety: ‘I think one of the wonderful things about horror is that you’re expected to maximize the impact of your story. Everybody wants to do that with a drama, with the romance, whatever.
Alfie Williams (left) starred in the movie alongside acting royalty at the age of just 14
Ralph Fiennes features in the movie as Dr. Kelson, with critics praising the actor’s ‘scene-stealing’ performance
‘But with horror, it’s obviously gonna be brutal, some of it. What we loved was setting it against an innocence that’s represented by the various children in it, and also the landscape, the beauty of the landscape, the nature.
‘Having those two forces stretches your story as far as you can go, if you maximize them. That was our principle and the studio was supportive of that, of course they were.’
The new film – which is now available in UK cinemas after its June 20 release – has received a host of rave reviews from critics.
Rotten Tomatoes for instance have handed the movie an impressive 94 percent critic approval rating after rounding up the thoughts of more than 91 film reviewers.
The Daily Mail’s Brian Viner was incredibly impressed after watching the series’ latest gory installment, dubbing the movie the ‘best post-apocalyptic horror-thriller film I have ever watched’.
Brian wrote: ‘With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic survivalist horror-thriller film I have ever seen. Which sounds like limited praise, yet it’s a much more crowded field than you might think.’
Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also handed 28 Years Later a rave review, with the critic scoring the ‘terrifying’ horror movie five stars out of five.
‘Garland employs a strain of peculiarly British pulp humour – very 2000 AD, very Warhammer 40,000 – to undercut the ambient dread,’ Collin wrote.
23 years on from the original which saw a deadly virus plague London, the new movie finds a group of survivors living on the secluded island of Lindisfarne
Jodie Comer (centre) features as Spike’s mother in the new movie, with the actress’s performance described as ‘marvelous’ by critics
‘And flashes of Arthurian fantasias and wartime newsreel footage (as well as a pointed double cameo for the now-felled Sycamore Gap tree_ serve as regularly nudges in the ribs as he and Boyle ty with the notion of a 21st century British national myth.’
The film too received five stars from The Times critic Ed Potton, who hailed Jodie Comer’s ‘impressive as always’ performance.
The journalist wrote: ‘Is this the most beautiful zombie film of them all? It’s hard to think of another that combines such wonder and outlandishness with the regulation flesh-rending, brain-munching and vicious disembowelment.’
The BBC’s Caryn James gave the highly-anticipated film four stars out of five as she dubbed Ralph Fiennes’s performance ‘scene-stealing’.
’28 Years Later is part zombie-apocalypse horror, part medieval world building, part sentimental family story and – most effectively – part Heart of Darkness in its journey towards a madman in the woods,’ she wrote.
‘It glows with Boyle’s visual flair, Garland’s ambitious screenplay and a towering performance from Ralph Fiennes, whose character enters halfway through the film and unexpectedly becomes its fraught sole’.
Empire also awarded 28 Years Later four stars out of five, with journalist Ben Travis writing: ’28 Years Later is ferocious, fizzing with adrenaline. The mainland thrums with a pervasive sense of immediate danger; when the infected arrive (and, do they arrive), it is breathlessly tense.’
