REVIEW: 28 Years Later - grisly, gruesome and compelling... eventually

The S has long since dropped off the word Shell at the tumbledown abandoned petrol station. This is hell, director Danny Boyle is determined to point out to us. And it really is – a world where (presumably with a little nod to Brexit) the British isles have been quarantined to keep a ghastly virus at bay.

There is a little outpost of semi-normal civilisation on Lindisfarne, but if you wander across the gated causeway at low tide, you are into a world dominated by the infected, sprinting zombies who would rip your head off (spine still attached) as soon as look at you.

This is a gruesome, ghastly film – but oddly compelling once we’ve got over an overlong preamable in which Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a noted killer of the infected, takes his 12-year-old son Spike (quite brilliant throughout from Alfie Williams) across to the mainland to initiate him in the joys sending an arrow through the baddies’ necks.

They get back by the skin of their teeth, after which it all gets considerably more interesting. Spike’s mum is seriously ailing with an undiagnosed illness. Her mind is going. Her ability to walk is fading. And yet Spike carts her off to the mainland. He’s heard that there is a rogue doctor there who might just be able to help if only Spike can find him.

And that’s when the film gets seriously tense – and actually very moving. But despite the horrors, humour is never terribly far away – even if quite a lot of it, you suspect, wasn’t actually supposed to make us giggle into our popcorn. There are moments which work terrifically and terrifyingly; there are moments that are risible.

But the superior second half keeps you hooked – and then pulls the threadbare rug out from under our feet with the bizarrest of endings. Are we really looking at who we think we are looking at? Complete with a whole gang of acolytes? Very cleverly it brings the whole film full circle, but in a way we could never have possibly guessed – and in a way which is sure to court endlessly controversy and accusations of abysmal taste. Presumably all will become clearer when the next film comes along…