28 Years Later…A Disjointed Return

To be honest, I wasn't exactly excited for 28 Years Later, but I still rushed to the theater on Friday (June 20) to check it out. After all, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later feel like distant memories by now. Personally, after watching 28 Weeks, I wasn’t expecting another sequel to live up to that level again. While many don’t consider 28 Weeks Later a success, for me, it actually surpassed 28 Days.

But back to 28 Years Later.

The word that best sums up my impression of the film is "disjointed." It felt like a series of separate films—each possibly made by a different director and writer, using the same characters and actors—and then edited together into one. That’s how fragmented the narrative felt.

Take the protagonist's character arc, for example: he starts off as a scared boy on his first hunting trip outside the island, yet overnight transforms into a man who willingly takes his physically weak mother on a perilous journey to the mainland. That leap felt unearned. The story then further complicates things: the boy’s original goal is to find a doctor to heal his mother, but when they do find one, the doctor persuades her to sacrifice herself—apparently so the boy can “grow.” I understand the intention behind this storyline, but the execution felt forced and logically shaky.

What’s more, the tribe on the island and the father figure seem to exist in a kind of narrative limbo—like quantum states with no real development or resolution.

That’s why 28 Years Later felt like 4 or 5 loosely connected short films spliced together, with little narrative cohesion.

From my perspective, what made the 28 series iconic was not just the introduction of fast-running zombies (which was genre-defining), but more importantly, the overwhelming sense of despair—the empty streets, the asymmetric brutality of the infected, and the moral ambiguity in human behavior during crises. That emotional weight was the soul of the series.

28 Years Later, however, didn’t feel despairing at all. It even seemed to reach for a kind of harmony or resolution. And that really frustrated me. Maybe, as the director and writers have aged, they’re more drawn to themes of reconciliation than survival horror.

Anyway, my personal rating is... 68 out of 100.

母语

上周五（6月20日）第一时间跑到电影院看了《28年之后》。说不上是满怀期待，但确实是出于想一窥究竟的好奇心。毕竟《28天之后》和《28周之后》距离现在都太久远了。而且就我个人而言，看完《28周之后》后，其实并没有太奢望还能有一部延续那种水准的续作。虽然很多人并不认为《28周》成功，但对我来说，它是一部超越《28天》的存在。

扯远了，回到这次的《28年之后》。

之所以我对这部电影的第一评价是“割裂”，是因为整部影片给我的观感，就像是“由几位不同的导演和编剧，围绕同一组演员和角色拍摄的多个故事，再被剪辑成一部电影”一样。每一段看似完整，但彼此之间联系感极弱，让人出戏。

尤其是男主的成长线——从一个第一次“出岛狩猎”时还满脸恐惧、需要前辈带着的男孩，用一夜时间就变成了一个能够带着身体状况不佳的母亲踏上极度危险旅途的“硬汉”。这种人物弧光是不是有点太跳跃了？还有母亲主动“献身”（牺牲），让儿子完成所谓“成长”的情节。虽然我能理解导演想要表达的意图，但这种转折实在太牵强了。

更别提整段设定是：男孩是为了寻找医生来拯救母亲才踏上旅途，结果最后医生却“劝说”母亲主动牺牲。看到这我是一脸问号。此外，小岛上的部族、父亲这些角色，感觉就像是量子态存在一样，完全没有实质性的发展或参与，像是铺垫却又被放弃的伏笔。

所以整体来看，《28年之后》就像是把四五段独立短片硬拼成一部长片，缺乏整体性，割裂感非常强。

从整个系列角度来看，我觉得《28》系列之所以成功，首先当然是“奔跑丧尸”这一突破性的设定，直接树立了风格。但更重要的是系列传达出的绝望感：空无一人的街道、不对称的攻击速度、以及文戏中幸存者间人性的挣扎和撕裂。那种让人无力的压迫感，才是这个系列最核心的记忆点。

而《28年》显然不再那么“绝望”了，甚至透露出了一种“和谐共处”的幻想。这种转变让我很抓狂。或许，随着导演和编剧年龄的增长，他们更倾向于表达“和解”？我不知道。

总之，个人评分只能是……呃……68 / 100。