28 DAYS LATER marked a salient reinvention of the zombie genre, providing an infection in the blood that turns people into enraged homicidal maniacs. 28 WEEKS LATER was the polished but less punchy and visceral follow-up. With 28 YEARS LATER, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland team up again to revisit this sad universe, returning to its grungy, episodic roots with a new film that explores fresh weird and blood-soaked terrain.

28 DAYS LATER was a big influence for my zombie novels back in the day. From the gritty look and music to the desolation to the terror of the infected to the sheer desperation of the survivors, I loved it. I liked 28 WEEKS LATER–especially the insane opening scene–but didn’t love it. Tonally, it was so different, and when the SHTF, it ended too quickly for me. So, I went into 28 YEARS LATER ready for anything, especially after watching the off-the-hook trailer with the wild song where an actor recites Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Boots.”

Anyway, England has fallen due to a blood-borne virus that causes homicidal rage and shedding blood. The infected immediately either kill you or infect you. The authorities disinfected the island and tried to bring the survivors back to repopulate London, but a fresh outbreak destroyed the settlement. The virus was pushed back from mainland Europe, and the UK is permanently quarantined, leaving the human survivors to fend for themselves.

In a community surviving on a small island off mainland UK, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams, who pulls his weight as the lead) lives with his father and ailing mother. The community has a strange culture with traditions around conquering death, including masks and boys going ashore to kill an infected. When Spike learns of an isolated and possibly insane doctor tending a perpetual bonfire of the dead, he sets out in the hopes of getting his mother cured, learning to respect instead of fear death in the process. An apocalyptic bildungsroman. Along the way, Spike encounters various survivors and variants on the infected as the Rage virus has mutated.

Overall, it was fun and weird and different, throwing out the fast-food menu of the franchise for a far grungier vision that hearkens back to the original. At the end, Spike meets up with someone in a setup for a continuation of the story, which I would definitely watch.

As far as criticisms, some of the editing is heavy-handed, and Boyle’s trick of occasionally freeze-framing during action scenes doesn’t work for me. The first act has cutaways to British documentary war footage and old movies of medieval warfare, which was odd and unnecessary. The overall story’s episodic nature is similar to Garland’s CIVIL WAR. Story wise, I think it would have been better to convey more tangibly what Spike is rejecting about his home and why beyond the philosophical theme, and make him a little older. If it’s a simple story set in an apocalyptic world, they should have leaned on it. Also, I’m surprised Spike finds a home in the wild world when it’s obvious he very likely won’t survive–it’s not really clear he understands and accepts this. I don’t want to overthink a zombie movie, but this one does seem to reach for something bigger.

Anyway, no matter. Overall, I thought 28 YEARS LATER was a worthy addition to the Rage universe. It didn’t trigger a hungry sense of wonder like the first movie did and it wasn’t quite as visceral, but it was weird, punchy, exciting, and a fun ride.

In MadS (2024), a French zombie movie, a young party goer becomes infected with a strange virus. Shot in one continuous take, the film packs a lot of frantic energy and has a lot of unpredictability, but the limitations of the form may have some viewers restless while watching.

The movie begins with a young man scoring coke from his dealer. On the way home, he is forced to pull over, which is when a strange woman jumps into the car and appears to kill herself, splashing him with blood. Frantic, he drives home and is drawn out of the house by a woman he’s dating and their friends for a night out on the town. As the night wears on, he becomes increasingly paranoid, appears to have gas mask-wearing soldiers with rifles chasing him, and finally breaks down and acts erratic.

The film then switches point of view to the woman and then to her friend. Along the way, it’s uncertain if they’re sharing a really horrible drug trip or turning into zombies. This is more or less answered by the end, but the question hung over much of the movie for me.

The movie doesn’t bother too much with character, preferring to lean on the one continuous take to stimulate the viewer. The only trick is this can be fatiguing, and there are very long stretches of the POV character moving from place to place where not much is happening.

By the end, I felt like I’d eaten a chocolate bar for dinner, if you know what I mean.

All in all, though, I had fun with it. The continuous take is always an impressive technical feat. The actors all act naturally, which along with the somewhat grainy aesthetic gives the whole thing a bit of a cinema verite feel. It’s both a zombie movie and not a zombie movie, inspired by them but doing its own thing, showing how a z-poc might start from the infected’s point of view.

In the Filipino zombie movie OUTSIDE (2024, Netflix), a family faces its dark secrets and inner demons against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. Though arguably it could have used more zombies and a bit more action, the movie is a breath of fresh air in a genre whose tropes have been overworked by Hollywood, focusing on the human toll of stress when everything falls apart.

The movie begins with a family traveling into the countryside, where Francis (Sid Lucero) believes they can find refuge with his parents. He brings Iris (Beauty Gonzales) and their boys Josh (Marco Masa) and Lucas (Aiden Patdu). They take over the sugar plantation and attempt to hold out, but Iris is anxious about reaching other survivors and wants to leave, while Francis wants to stay.

There’s a lot of slow burn family drama and psychological horror here, as the characters and what drives them unravels like the proverbial onion. Iris appears cold, but she has her reasons. Francis is insecure and tries too hard to prove himself as a man, but he has his reasons. All of it enhanced and salted by not knowing if anyone else is alive amid civilization’s collapse; instead of putting aside all the old stuff because the world is ending, the movie makes the point that the opposite may be true. The actors do a great job communicating in a layered way, both what they want and what they need.

The zombies are pretty well done, nicely creepy. The only trick is by the third act, they start to fade as a threat until the very end, while the family drama boils over. I was all in for it, as I greatly enjoyed the movie and was happy to go where it took me, but some might not be. The location was interesting too, taking us into the rural Philippines.

Overall, I liked OUTSIDE a lot. I’ve seen a lot of zombie movies, and while this one ain’t perfect, it’s good. Where movies like WORLD WAR Z excelled in action but failed in basic character development and making us care, OUTSIDE goes the other way, not providing nearly as much action but offering richly drawn characters who feel like real people, thrown into a claustrophobic horror of the apocalypse.