MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's been a long wait for fans of the game-changing horror thriller "28 Days Later." That film opened in 2002. Its well-received follow-up "28 Weeks Later" arrived pretty quickly in 2007, but fans have been cooling their heels for almost two decades awaiting "28 Years Later." It opens this weekend, and critic Bob Mondello says it was worth the wait.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: We begin, oddly enough, with "Teletubbies" - children watching a scratchy videotape behind closed doors as their parents scramble frantically outside.
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HALEY FLAHERTY: (As character) Sit here. Sit.
ROCCO HAYNES: (As Jimmy) Auntie, what's going on?
FLAHERTY: (As character) Jimmy, sit still, keep quiet and do not move from this spot.
MONDELLO: It is 28 years ago, and what these kids need protecting from is a rage virus developed in a bioweapons lab, now turning all of England into ravaging flesh eaters. The story picks up in the present, in an island compound just off the English coast. Words on the screen say that though the rage virus appeared to have made it to the rest of Europe at the end of "28 Weeks Later," the world successfully contained it. Britain has now been quarantined, with warships patrolling the coast and its remaining uninfected inhabitants effectively left for dead.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Once you walk on to that mainland, there's no rescue.
MONDELLO: The compound's leader is speaking to Spike, a lad of 12, who's grown up on the island and is about to make his first foray with his dad...
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Let's go.
MONDELLO: ...Into infected territory. Once he kills one of the infected, he'll be allowed to join folks in the compound when they forage out here for food and fuel. Spike and his dad are armed with bows and arrows and are in the middle of an open field when they spot a naked figure on a hill, then another, then a lot.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Go back to the trees.
ALFIE WILLIAMS: (As Spike) I can't (ph).
MONDELLO: Spike's a decent archer, and he makes his first kill. He also learns something that will bring him back on an odyssey that director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland - the guys who came up with the franchise's original concept - have conceived every bit as much as a coming-of-age tale in a time of crisis as it is a tale of raging zombies. Spike's close relationship with his sickly mom, played by Jodi Comer, is central.
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JODIE COMER: (As Isla) Your granddad was so silly, and everyone else thought he was so serious, but round me, he was daft. You know, when I look in your face, I see your granddad's eyes. It's nice.
MONDELLO: Spike makes a face and sticks out his tongue.
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COMER: (As Isla, laughing) Exactly.
ALFIE: (As Spike) I'm going to stay awake and keep watch.
COMER: (As Isla) OK, Dad.
MONDELLO: This is an unexpectedly homey note for a horror franchise built around visceral thrills and just plain viscera, but Boyle and Garland have always had their eye on broader issues. In the "28 Days" movie, released less than a year after 9/11, they infected society with implacable rage then focused on the moral decay that went with it. In the new film, they clock what's happened since - a real pandemic and Brexit, with its self-inflicted isolation of Britain. And for anyone with doubts that those broader themes are intended, they offer images of wars going back to the Middle Ages, accompanied by a chanted Rudyard Kipling poem, and they bring in Ralph Fiennes to offer an overview. He plays a doctor who's got a witchy Macbeth thing going after enduring rage-addled decades of sound and fury.
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RALPH FIENNES: (As Dr. Kelson) Do you know the words memento mori?
ALFIE: (As Spike) No.
FIENNES: (As Dr. Kelson) It means remember death. Remember you must die.
MONDELLO: He tends a boneyard filled with what look like trees of femurs and shin bones, a veritable mountain of skulls - a testament to what unchecked rage can do to a society - shot, as was much of "28 Years Later," partly on iPhones that give scenes a grainy, yet painterly look.
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FIENNES: (As Dr. Kelson) And so many dead. Every skull is a set of thoughts. This is a monument to them.
MONDELLO: A monument that's likely to stick in your own thoughts long enough to get you to the next, already-shot sequel. "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" is set to open in just six months.
I'm Bob Mondello.
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