Today in No Thank You news, the trailer for 28 Years Later, the long-awaited third film in the 28 Days Later franchise, dropped and it’s pants sh-ttingly scary. This trailer is a two-minute master class of jangling nerves and upsetting imagery. The new film is set, appropriately, 28 years after a “rage virus” zombified London and the world beyond, and it reunites the original Days writer and director duo of Alex Garland and Danny Boyle. The original film stars Cillian Murphy as Jim, an unlikely survivor, and the 28 Years Later trailer seems—emphasis on “seems”—to tease Jim’s fate, don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

 

The new film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, and Ralph Fiennes as hardened survivors of this new reality. While the trailer features some striking imagery, such as a towering pile of skulls and a crow pecking on a trapped zombie (person?), the real horror is the use of Taylor Holmes’ 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Boots” on the soundtrack. “Boots” is one of Kipling’s best works and Holmes’ unhinged reading is a real case of “hear it once, forget it never”. The poem is about an infantryman clinging to his sanity amidst the endless cycle of violence and monotony in the Second Boer War. Kipling’s pro-Imperialist writings have not aged well, but “Boots” stands out as one of the starkest renderings of the mental toll of war, which is why it’s perfect for 28 Years Later, which imagines a world reshaped after the fall of once-modern society.

 

The movie itself looks cool, though. I muted the trailer to separate the impact of “Boots” from the impact of the imagery, and it’s still pretty f-cking scary without Kipling’s evocative madness to back it up. There’s a lot to pick apart, from the maybe-Cillian-zombie popping up in the field to the person in the bloodied mask to the graffitied warning “behold, he is coming with the clouds” and the scrawled name “Jimmy”—a reference to Cillian Murphy’s character?—never mind whatever that pile of skulls is about. I have a general “skulls are never good” policy, so it’s probably not anything good. I don’t want to try and out-guess the movie, I want to enjoy it when it comes out next June, but it definitely looks like no one is thriving in this dystopic alternate reality. “Boots” wasn’t chosen for the soundtrack on accident. 

 

In a Wicked move, this trailer isn’t letting on that 28 Years Later is a “part one” situation. A direct sequel titled 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple (terrible, but also, WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT SKULLS) was filmed late last year directly after filming for 28 Years Later ended. Part II is written by Boyle and Garland, but it is directed by Nia DaCosta—good to see her bouncing back from The Marvels. Very little is known about the film except that Cillian Murphy was seen on set last August. I think the failure of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part I permanently scared everyone off titling their film “part one”. They’d rather get everyone in the theater for “part one” and then spring the existence of “part two” on them later. 

 

Whether or not this works in the long run, we’ll see, but for now, I am definitely here for 28 Years Later even if it does make my spine crawl. Boots! Boots! Boots!