CW: Spoilers for 28 Days Later and discussions of disturbing subject matter.
Jacob Dallas and Lenore Olson of the literary podcast The Socialist Shelf join me from Atlanta for a discussion of Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later.
Set a couple of decades after the UK was consumed by the Rage Virus of the first film and is now a nation isolated from the rest of the world, 28 Years Later takes place on a small island community in Northern England that has in turn isolated itself from the mainland, and depicts the rituals of this broken society where the surviving men are the hunter gatherers and the women are the providers.
28 Years Later also operates as a metaphor for the UK in the shadow of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, with a society that has forgotten the details of the past but carries on. We discuss some of the provocative ideas 28 Years Later puts forward, including some sympathy for the infected, some contempt for the surviving human race, and the disturbing (and unexpectedly comedic) coda that marks this film as Extremely British, which may not have been clear to international audiences (and indeed enraged some British viewers), while setting up next January’s sequel.
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Follow Jacob Dallas and Lenore Olson on Bluesky and visit The Socialist Shelf’s website.
Jacob’s upcoming novel They Called Her Rebel (Collective Ink) is now available for pre-order!
Trailer #1 for 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2025)
Trailer #1 for 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta, 2026)