Summary
Anticipation is building for the long-awaited sequel,28 Years Later.Alex Garland’s next outing in the zombie genre has just got a new trailer, and it’s clear that this follow-up has been inspired by another popular undead franchise.
28 Days Laterwas a milestone in zombie cinema. It was the British take on a well-known genre that had existed in Hollywood for many years. Directed by veteran filmmaker Danny Boyle, known for his work onTrainspotting(1996) andSlumdog Millionaire(2008), and written by Alex Garland, whose extensive filmography includes more recent projects like A24’sCivil War(2024). Together, these two creative voices updated zombies for a modern audience. In28 Days Later, the zombies are of a different breed from Hollywood’s more old-fashioned, slow, and lumbering undead. The28 Dayszombies are fast, aggressive, highly contagious individuals that aren’t undead, but instead infected with the Rage Virus, a blood-borne disease that induces extreme anger in its victims. They are incredibly deadly, and their speed redefined how audiences viewed these corrupted corpses. It also led to other series likeThe Last of Us(2023) adopting this style of zombie, pushing the medium forward with its own iconic twists.
In arecent episode ofCreator to Creator,Alex Garland and the creator-writer ofThe Last of Us,Neil Druckmann, discussed how they have extensively influenced each other’s work over the years.The Last of Ushas had a huge effect on the zombie scene itself. It carried over many of28 Days’themes. Druckmann’s world has infected humans, who roam its dystopic landscape. However, instead of basing the disease on a fictional, over-the-top form of rabies, Druckmann decided to rootthe undead’s creation around a real-life fungusknown as Cordyceps. Specific strains of Cordyceps can take over smaller lifeforms like ants, embedding in the brain, bending the host to its will, and eventually, controlling them even after death.The Last of Ustakes a small evolutionary jump from insects to mammals by claiming the fungus evolved due to changing climates, but its incredibly close ties to our current reality make it all the more terrifying than28 Days.
The zombies inThe Last of Usalso carry over28 Daysfast, rage-filled zombies. However, given the fact that video games require in-built escalations as the difficulty increases, Druckmann devised several different stages for his Cordyceps-infected; something that28 Dayslacks.The Last of Uszombiesprogress from runners, to stalkers, to clickers, to bloaters. Druckmann’s work also follows28 Daysexploration of the human condition, and how humanity can actually be the greatest danger in this kind of apocalypse. In many ways,The Last of Usups the stakes of the human threat massively by imagining a world filled with cannibals and roaming packs of scavenging hunters. Its world is much darker societally than28 Days.Its disease is much more entangled with the emotional struggles of its characters, given that Ellie is immune to Cordyceps, and Joel’s dashing of humanity’s hope for a cure to rescue her is the perfect encapsulation of the awful choices people face in its post-apocalyptic landscape.
The28 Days LaterWriter Raves About HowThe Last of UsHas Inspired His New Film
28 Years Lateris clearly inspired by Druckmann’s work. The film is set in a small community called Hosy Island, walled off by the sea, comparable to that of Jackson or the FEDRA quarantine zone in Boston. Garland’s new story heavily features a child-parent dynamic betweenJamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams), which is reminiscent of Joel and Ellie’s adventures through the wilderness.28 Years Later’smost recent trailer also teases cult-like death-worshipping communities on the mainland, a more evolved version of the Rage Virus, and a creature that looks very similar in appearance to that of a bloater.
In theCreator to Creatorpodcast, Garland flat out admitted thatThe Last of Uswas a vast improvement on his creation. The writer heaped praise on Druckmann:
“The Last of Us’ is better than ’28 Days Later.’ The thing about ‘The Last of Us,’ I was like, this is so much more sophisticated. It was very nice for me with ‘The Last of Us’ to sort of feel like someone saying, ‘Where’s your game?'”
Garland went so far as to reveal that a previous script for28 Years Laterhad been around as early as 2019, but the writer could sense that former colleague and director Danny Boyle was not interested in his COVID-19-themed script: “Danny Boyle read it and he kind of said, ‘Yeah, OK. I sort of want to do this.’ But I know Danny very well and I could see that he didn’t really want to do it at all.”This led Garland to pursue a completely brand-new rewrite of the script, upping his game very much, and what he ultimately ended up with is something that is closer toThe Last of Usin terms of its story. In Garland’s own words: “‘Last of Us’ had such an impact on me.” Druckmann returned the appreciation by highlighting that the “Infected” from the world ofThe Last of Uswas directly inspired by Garland’s work in 2002:
“There’s a direct line between the fast infected [in ’28 Days Later’] and the infected in ‘The Last of Us.'”
Garland also elaborated on the origins of28 Days Later,beginning with inspiration from theResident Evilseries, a survival zombie video game from 1996. It’s fascinating to see the zombie zeitgeist that exists across the different mediums of film and gaming feeding off one another in this strange symbiosis that would give the Cordyceps brain infection a run for its money. Now, the movie that inspiredThe Last of Usis closing the circle with a new addition releasing this year that will continue to push the genre to new, interesting places.28 Years Lateris the beginning of a new trilogy after all, not simply a sequel to its early 2000s predecessors.
Audiences can catch28 Years Later,which is set to release in theaters exclusively on 20th June.
