The Two Types of Zombie in '28 Years Later'

*Major spoilers for 28 Years Later below

Last Saturday, I went to see Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s '28 Years Later'. It built on the lore of the rage virus and the world of the first two instalments in interesting ways, and underwent massive tonal shifts throughout, from post-apocalyptic thriller to heartfelt coming-of-age tale, to a sort of slapstick, darkly comic take on the zombie subgenre in a bizarre end sequence teasing an already-filmed sequel.

In a way, this tonal uncertainty mirrors the central conflict experienced by the protagonist, 12-year-old Spike – trying to claim adulthood and identity on his own terms, having been let down by his role model. From the insular, fortress-like Holy Island, off the north-east coast of England, Spike’s first expedition to the mainland with his father exposes the latter’s enthusiasm for killing, and he exaggerates the heroism involved at an after-party, playing up an alpha-male persona and being unfaithful to Spike’s bedbound mother. The island itself has regressed to a sort of golden-age, warrior mentality that venerates this behaviour and mythologises its heroes, emphasised by the spliced-in footage of archers from 'Henry V' and the imagery of St. George’s flags.

The island society also finds a dark reflection on the mainland, particularly with the introduction of ‘alpha’ infected, along with the possibility of the infected having children, and what conceptions of fatherhood and motherhood they could even have. This got me thinking about the origins of the zombie myth, and how they, like the film’s narrative and the rage virus itself, have mutated over time to represent entirely different fears.

(As a sidenote, if you enjoyed the setting of a politically complex, walled-in society alongside a devastated mainland, and meditations on morality, parenthood, grief, and identity, you might enjoy my dystopian novel, 'Lichtenberg', due to be released in November).

The Haitian Zombi

The figure of the zombi comes from Haitian folklore and the vodou religion, with a variety of competing descriptions, but the forerunner of the modern-day movie zombie would most likely be the ‘flesh’ zombi, a dead body reanimated by a sorcerer for the purposes of enslavement. The ethnologist Alfred Métraux proposed a version of this zombi that outlines some key features:

‘He moves, eats, even speaks, but has no memory, and is not aware of his condition. The zombi is a beast of burden exploited mercilessly by his master who forces him to toil in the fields, crushes him with work, and whips him at the slightest pretext, whilst feeding him on the blandest of diets… Their docility is absolute as long as they are given no salt. If they inadvertently eat any food containing even a single grain of salt, the fog enveloping their minds is immediately dispelled and they become suddenly aware of their environment. This discovery arouses in them an immense anger and an uncontrollable desire for revenge. They hurl themselves on their master, kill him, ravage his goods, then go off in search of their graves.’

The Hollywood Zombie

The zombie entered the American consciousness during the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, retaining a sense of limbo between life and death, and a loss of free will and identity, but losing something of the connection to slavery. If zombies are slaves at all, it is not to a malevolent master, but to their own hunger – this in turn expresses the fear not that someone might make us a zombie, and bring us under their control, but that there is an emptiness in our human lives approaching that of a zombie already. And there is no salty saviour to return us to a ‘real’ life.  

This is generally the conception of the zombie that has survived in the western imagination, though '28 Years Later' plays with that formula, to an extent.

(De)Zombification in '28 Years Later'

It does not exactly break new ground for a film like this to suggest that people can represent a graver threat than zombies, but I think its theme of parenthood captures something of the zombi dynamic, rendering its human characters both more dangerous and more interesting. Victims of the rage virus are closer to the Hollywood zombie, though the alpha mutation implies that some are attaining higher thought and greater independence. Spike’s relationship with his father, determined to make him a killing machine, and even naming him to that effect, is more akin to that of master and zombi. It is only when Spike learns to take his father’s worldview with a grain of salt (apologies for the forced analogy) that he can forge his own identity, and venture into proper adulthood on the mainland, instead of the arrested development represented by Holy Island.

Of course, the final scene potentially upends Spike’s entire arc, as he runs into, and is seemingly adopted by, the ‘Jimmys’ – a tracksuit-wearing, platinum-haired gang, modelled after an icon whose crimes wouldn’t have been outed in a world that came to a halt in 2002. Their leader really is called Jimmy, as we learn in the film’s opening scene, which takes place at the outbreak of the rage virus, so seeing how he has attached himself to such a problematic role model in the intervening 28 years immediately reintroduces questions of identity, nominative determinism, and arrested development, while casting an ominous shadow over the exaggerated action sequence where the gang saves Spike from a horde of the infected.

It’s an incredibly bold ending, and one of the most original I can remember seeing. I’m not sure whether there’s a tragic irony in their tracksuits and personas, or something else – the scene speaks to a modern audience in an entirely non-diegetic way, as the ‘innocence’ of the gang’s namesake has not yet been lost for them.

Where 28 Days Later explored the idea that modern society wasn’t prepared for something like the rage virus, and could face total collapse, 28 Years (perhaps with a COVID-inspired hindsight) is concerned with how we rebuild in the aftermath, and the cultural and political touchstones that remain. My novel is concerned with the same questions, though it is set much further from the present moment than 28 years: its protagonist is a soldier living under an authoritarian regime, in a future so bleak and wintry that life outside of it is impossible, and the story explores what it would actually take to challenge it without a feasible alternative.

I have always found myself drawn to dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction – whenever it takes place and whatever devices it incorporates, I think it gives us valuable insights into the darker parts of human nature, but is primarily interested in human resilience, and I was thrilled to see such a massive franchise taking a nuanced and philosophical approach to the subject.

Editor's note:

Thanks for reading The Two Types of Zombie in '28 Years Later' by Tom O'Connell. We invite you to pre-order the limited edition paperback of Tom's excellent dystopian fiction, Lichtenberg. Pre-order customers will also receive a FREE e-book of the title to their email address.

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