Welcome to Britain: a backwards-looking island quarantined from continental Europe, a once peaceful nation torn apart by snarling hordes of brain-dead numbskulls. But enough about Brexit. Here’s the third instalment in the 28 Days/Weeks/Times table franchise you didn’t know you needed.
To be honest, I thought it was all over between me and the Undead. I felt the same way about zombies as I do about Batman reboots, the Marvel Cinematic Snooziverse and pavement-riding Deliverooligans: I never want to see another as long as I live. But screenwriter Alex Garland is on a blowtorched hot streak after Civil War and Warfare, and Danny Boyle has a point to prove after the winsome misfire of Yesterday. Together, the ageing bad boys of Cool Britannia reunite to teach the Last of Us whippersnappers some new tricks.
Garland and Boyle unleash a film as taut as a sprinting Infected’s hamstring and beset by truly startling visions that demand a cinema viewing, even though the whole thing was reportedly shot on iPhones. Swoon to sublimely beautiful vistas of a moonlit ocean causeway, then prepare to clench your butt at the spectacle of the first ever pregnant-zombie-in-labour scene. ER’s Mark Green had some harrowing deliveries in his day, but he never let off steam by blowing the mother’s head off with a machine gun.
The story fits into a tight ninety minutes. B-Movies with A-Levels should be no longer. The lean plot speaks to the very heart of modern Britain: twelve-year-old Spike must face down his bullying father and embark on a seemingly futile quest to get his mother checked by a doctor. In a nightmarish glimpse of a week next Tuesday, the UK’s health provision rests solely in the hands of a mild-mannered, bonkers, bright orange GP (an iodine spray-tan a day helps keep the Infected away, or so he claims…), conducting medical examinations behind a wall of bones, underneath a pyramid of skulls culled from former patients. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s the only doctor in Britain not on strike. It’s still murder to get an appointment.
If by this time you’re thinking, like Nigel Tufnel, how much more black could this be? Don’t worry, an army of flaxen-haired, Scottish kung-fu monks in garish shell-suits show up to slay zombies with bling and braggadocio, and an unsavoury whiff of Jimmy Saville. Our pre-pubescent hero might be better off with his brutish father than these creeps, but Spike Island’s got problems enough of its own: a Moses basket’s worth of orphaned, gurgling zombie-baby shows up on its doorstep. Don’t worry, she’s not infected, or so they claim…
Luckily, we don’t have to wait another 28 years to find out. The fourth instalment, The Bone Temple, is out in January. You might even have a doctor’s appointment by then.