Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - 28 Years Later (2025)

take a look at some dystopia. More specifically, it's the dystopia everyone's talking about. Actually, no, they're not talking about post apocalypse. They're talking about zombie dong and we will too, I suppose, since everyone is a fucking fourteen year old girl when it comes to on screen penis, we are looking at twenty eight years later. But we'll get there after some days and some weeks. It's the Danny Boyle Alex Garland. Wait, no, it's not them anymore. Weight they're back.

The series has gone from shitty DV camera to high quality thirty five millimeters back to fucking iPhones. Before we get there, a quick annoying autobiographical pause. Now I've told this story over on the Projection Booth podcasts. You should head over there for more in depth analysis of this film, but see In nineteen eighty two, I was consumed with creep Show mania. I read and re read that comic. I listened to the soundtrack obsessively, and I sought out

any tangential material related to creep Show. That's how I ended up convincing my mother to rent the Ripper. The shot on videotape Nightmare, starring FX guru Tom Savini. What

a boondoggle, a horn swoggle, that was. But the holy grail, the one I just could not find in any fashion, was the film, the film that George Romero had made a few years prior, a film my older, irresponsible cousins would talk about in Whispers Dawn of the Dead, a film my cousin Susan expressly forbade her husband from taking me to see, which he did at the first opportunity,

and it fucked my head up. Sincerely, the human in the movie theater seat when the lights went down was not the same one when the gog came flounced across the soundtrack two hours later. Suddenly, vampires and ghosts and Frankenstein's and witches and everything I'd come to know as scary took a fucking back seat to the ultimate monster us Because what are zombies but our loved ones and our friends back from the dead and just vacant all animal instinct and animal hunger. It's not hard to remember

just how horrifying a concept that is. Even after the last twenty five years of non stop zombie everything in entertainment, that wasn't always the case. Prior to two thousand and one. The number of zombie films totals about seventy give or take. Since then over five hundred. That doesn't count novels and comic books and TV shows and lunchboxes and plush toys. So what was the spark? Who if it wasn't Billy

Joel actually started the fire. Most horror folk and film folk for that matter, tend to point the decaying finger in the direction of twenty eight Days Later, and it's easy to understand why here was a thoughtful, dare i say, art house take on the zombie menace? Those art house bona fides are provided by Danny Boyle, I'd say, Alex Garland as well, but when twenty eight Days Later was released, he was just the guy who wrote the book that

Boyle had made into that disastrous DiCaprio flick. The Beach Boyle, on the other hand, was an indie darling. He still is, despite working in every strata of the industry imaginable. Incidentally, I think there's a divide that can be drawn for cinophiles about nineties movies. I have a theory you were either wowed by pulp fiction or train Spotting. I'm not trying to make a Beatles Stones feud or anything, but Trainspotting is the clear winner. There suck at all you

goons with your Uma Thurman posters on your dorm room walls. Anyway, if the guy who made train Spotting was taking the undead seriously, then I guess we all had better too. I like a lot of twenty eight Days Later, and I do think it managed to inspire a lot of measured re examination of horror and its impact, while giving a proper introduction to the greater populace of a proud member of the monster family that had been all but ignored up until then. But the film is not precient.

It didn't predict a goddamn thing. It is a thoughtful meditation on the times that was created, but it's cobbled together from other horror pieces. More specifically, Twenty eight Days Later is George Romero's Zombie trilogy, and a few of his other films used for parts with a thin layer of Day of the Triffids at the outset. Like that movie, our hero awakens after a lengthy hospital stay to find the entire world changed by a horrible invasion and has to figure out the where and the what and the

how while evading this new threat. That's the end of the Day of the Triffids. Then it's all zombies, although they're not because zombies are dead by fucking definition. These are living, breathing folks who've been infected by a virus. So after some harrowing though fairly rollicking adventures, our heroes form a family and try to live the old way

and are forced to move on. And then they're splintered apart again and again by the threat of these creatures, and in the end they run to what's left of civilization, which is the military, who are so fucking degenerate that the only way to any sort of safety is by embracing these zombies as your ally. If that's not night and Dawn in Day of the Dead, then well it just fucking is, There's no two ways about it. Also,

stop using rape as a fucking plot point. Okay, the fact that there would be a pandemic twenty years after the film does not make the film a fucking prophecy. The idea of rage filled humans triggered that way by a virus is straight from Romero's pre Dawn of the Dead flick The Crazies. They remade that a decade ago with Timothy Oliphant, which is pretty damn good. Anyway, The virus is also from Romero. Now, the virus being one

of rage, that's pure Alex Garland. That's the innovation. That's the relevant commentary they've added to the zombie equation since they're not dead and they're not zombies. By the way, the fast zombies slow zombie debate here is moot. This isn't Romero's sandbox that these movies are playing, and so the ghules can behave however you want. And the fucking fact of the matter is this movie did in no way create fast zombies. Do I need to say that again?

I think I do, because I was fucking shocked to hear Alex Garland and the interviewer and at least a dozen other so called horror podcasters talking about this subject and having only a passing familiarity with Return of the Living Dead. Those are zombies, they run. They are, in fact, the scariest zombies ever Committed to Celluloid, I'd take two shopping malls of Romero zombies to one or two Obannon

zombies in an empty field, easy. But people talk about Return of the Living Dead very casually, like, oh, there was a punk rock movie with zombies. Nah, fuck you. You're talking about a movie that is one thousand percent better than any zombie entertainment you'd put on a top ten list. Not you, listener, You're one of the good ones. I'm talking about these other horror hacks. I'm no gatekeeper, but know your fucking history. Otherwise we're all going to

end up in trouble. Up too late. And by the way, it wasn't as if there was nothing at all going on in zombie Town by the time twenty eight days later hit theaters. In nineteen ninety six, Capcom released Resident Evil on the PlayStation. While that game eventually involves straight up monsters, the main antagonist the one terrorizing a whole new generation and thus prepping them for what's to come was the zombie. I don't think the follow up to

twenty eight days later Quit gets the love it deserves. Twenty eight weeks later israelly an alien versus alien scenario. At least it would be if alien had been shot on a fucking camcorder. That's another aspect of twenty eight days Later. I got to mention, it looks like garbage. Yeah, they saved so much money and it allowed for all this kind of innovation and blah blah blah, it looks like shit. I do not buy the CCTV camera angle. Obviously, I'd prefer to have a terrible video looking move then

none at all. But come on, does anyone actually love the look of this film? Now? Twenty eight weeks later, Boyle and Garland were off making the wildly underrated film Sunshine. That's Afflick will definitely be covering at some point. I think it's Boyle's best film. That's right, better than Trainspotting in their Instead, they hired Intacto director Juan Carlos Resnadio.

The film takes place well twenty eight weeks later. The infected have been starved and or eradicated, and the US forces are in control of London and are reconstructing, while former residents having been abroad or fled during the outbreak are being resettled into the country. Listen, I should have said at the top, this is going to get real spoilery. I consider twenty eight days and twenty eight weeks to be fair game. They're twenty three and eighteen years old

at this point. When we get to twenty eight years later, I'll do a spoiler free sanction and then I'm going to warn you, because there's no way I can talk about that film without spilling some of the beans. The opening scene of twenty eight weeks Later is truly fuck horrifying. A husband and wife are holed up with a dozen

other survivors. They're set upon by the infected, and Robert Carlyle, our hero, panics and runs, leaving his wife, Catherine McCormick, and a small boy in the house with the infected while he runs and runs and runs. It's fucked. And then he's one of the families being relocated as he's being reunited with his children who were abroad during the outbreak,

and then the wife shows up alive. Holy fuck. Now, that's a dynamic to play against a backdrop of rage, infected chaos, and Harold Parano from Last shows up and he mows down an entire field of infected with a

helicopter's rotor blade. This is a great movie. And Jeremy Renner is in it, and Rose Byrne is in it, and Idris Elba Hello, I guess I'm supposed to feel pedestriate in some way that my favorite is the popcorn munch and all star cast that actually looks like a movie movie and not Danny Boyle's home movies of Halloween that one year twenty eight weeks later ends with what apparently was a loose end that needed to be dealt

with immediately. In the new film, right before the credits rule, there are shots of the infected emerging from the Metro in Paris and racing toward the Eiffel Tower. Thus, in the opening of twenty eight years later, we're told in an opening scrawl that the virus has been eradicated from mainland Europe. That keeps the action in Great Britain, which was a concern of Alex Garland and Danny Boyle when they returned, which is great Romero's films owe as much

to Pittsburgh as his imagination. Soh yeeha, keep that film series at home. But that wasn't the only loose thread that film left behind. The climax involves the fire bombing of London and the overall cooking of everyone still living in the UK. So where's everyone else coming from?

there's no navigating. There's just a quick trip out to the open ocean. Here, we're introduced to Jamie by Aaron Taylor Johnson Craven that's right, Craven and his twelve year old son Spike, played by the fucking Revelation that is Alfie Williams. Jamie's wife, Ila that's island in Spanish, y'all, is played by Jody Komer. She was the only good thing in that fucking horrible Ryan Reynolds video game movie

Free Guy. Actually, there's one other good thing in that movie at the end, when Ryan Reynolds is fighting a roided up version of himself. They're fighting on Revere Beach, which is my hometown anyway. Ila is laid up with horrible migraines. Most of the time, she's sick and deteriorating. As part of a coming of age ritual, Jamie takes Spike to the mainland to kill his first infected and to learn just what's going on over there. What's going

on is fucking horrifying. Given three decades to evolve, the infected have separated into three distinct categories, slow, bloated and usually blind creatures that crawl along the ground feeding on insects and earthworms. There's the regular old infected we've come to know and love. And then there's the alphas, apparently stronger and more intelligent and able to marshal the other infected, and they love ripping off heads with spine. Oh, and

everyone's naked. Every goddamn crazy in England is butt naked, butt naked, buck naked. I've heard both. What do you think father Malone seven to one at a Gmail dot com and that's where all the zombie dong talk is coming from, folks. The Alpha, nicknamed Samson, is a huge man with a huge cock. He puts Doctor Manhattan to shame as sister amanas my eighth grade teacher at Immaculate Conception School used to glower at us. You've seen it, Okay, get over it. Her name was Amnas, but there was

no love in her. The film is a solid two hours, with the first hour being Jamie and Spike and their adventures to and from the mainland. But when Spike discovers that a doctor is alive on the mainland, he makes the decision to take his mother and seek him out

and get the medical attention that she needs. Along the way, they encounter a Swedish NATO soldier who's found himself stranded and an infected woman pregnant with a normal child, and the doctor himself played by Ray, findes they may as well have named him doctor Romero, given that George made no secret that his allegiance in the Dead films was with the zombies, so too, Ray finds Doctor Kelson sees no difference between the human and the infected and treats

them both with equal respect. Now, if you've heard anything about this movie, it's the giant dick and the moment at the end, which we'll talk about in spoilers. But the other thing, the major thing, is the shift in tone. While the latter half of the movie doesn't skimp on frightening at times skin crawling scenarios, it settles quite heavily into a sense of mourning and sometimes sorrow. It's a far more contemplative film than either of the previous entries.

There's also a distinct flavor of spiritualism, at times bordering on the supernatural. I think if that sudden shift in gears from thrill ride to mausoleum walking tour is too much for you to bear, then the movie won't have much for you at all. But I imagine those complaining are the ones that didn't have any trouble when the bank robbing family, kidnapping Geko Brothers ended up besent by vampires at the Titty Twister. Here's the thing overall, I'm

of two minds on this film. If I didn't know there was a sequel already filmed and scheduled to come out in January of twenty twenty six. I think this movie would be a failure. If it were going to be a standalone flick, then it should have been Spike and Ila from the start, so we can fully know her and him and their relationship. As it is, we're given half a movie with her and half a movie setting up something else. Entirely, it does tell a complete story.

It is ultimately a coming of age film, and in that regard it not only succeeds its soars, but there was so much place setting going on for what is obviously the future Adventures on the Mainland that if you're judging this movie on its own, it's a big old failure. So we're left in the unenviable position of the matrix reloaded. Was it good? I don't know. I think so. Maybe I'll let you know when Revolutions comes out. Nope, garbage.

I have higher hopes with the continued involvement of Alex gos Arland that twenty eight years later The Bone Temple will not only bolster what the first movie had been laying down, but we'll give everyone exactly what they were looking for. Here is where to turn off the show

if you don't want anything spoil. You're not going to miss anything. I'll just give out the email address and beg you for money. But if you stay, I'm going to spoil the fuck out of everything. You need a countdown. Fuck that spoilers, y'all. That pregnant infected girl gives birth. They tote the kid around, keeping it safe for than the infected and away from Samson, even though it's totally fucking clear that it's Samson's kid. Alpha male with a giant prick. What else am I supposed to think? Oh,

and Isla has inoperable cancer and commits suicide. It's awful in a good way. At the end, Spike drops the baby off at the island like a cartoon from the nineteen forties, and then he goes off adventuring. Now here's

the Bonker's crazy mental bullshit. At the end, Spike is being chased down by a horde of infected when he's befriended by a group of young adults all dressed identically with dyed white blonde, gross hair, and they fucking parkour Ninja the fuck out of the infected with all the camera work of a Kung Fu flick, And I mean a Samo Hung Chinese opera Kung Fu Flick. You can actually hear the earlier tonal shift of the movie say out loud, Wow, I didn't see that coming, and I

fucking loved it. I keep thinking about it, turning it over and over in my head, and a crazy bit of potential non sequit or nonsense at the end of a contemplation of death and grief was such a fucking big swing and for me it absolutely connected. But let me explain why I'm not just some fanatic for physical comedy or action. Like twenty eight weeks later, twenty eight years later. It begins. At the start of The Outbreak two thousand and three, we're shown the Crystal family in

the Scottish Highlands. The children are gathered around watching Teletubbies when the infected invade. Jimmy Crystal, no older than Spike, escapes and finds his way to the local church where his father is a vicar who's preaching the Day of Atonement.

He gives Jimmy a crucifix, and Jimmy escapes and it's all horrifying and it's great, And that is the last we see of Jimmy until that final sequence the leader of the Parkourt gang of Badly Dressed Ninja's is Jimmy, which means that that boy has lived on the mainland and survived for twenty eight years. I love a book end, particularly when it doesn't announce itself, so I think on that level, this ending is a win. But further listen Jimmy Savil. He was a television personality and presenter on

the BBC. He hosted Top of the Pops and a show called Jim'll Fix It, which had children right in with a wish and then they try to make that wish happen. That show was wildly popular and ran for nearly twenty years. The man was beloved for his charity work and was generally seen as a top shelf eccentric. The gang at the end are styled exactly like Jimmy Savil. They are in fact a gang known as the Jimmy's. During an earlier scene, one of the infected can be

glimpsed with a Jimmy branded into its skin. So who knows what these crazies are up to? But it banks a couple of important questions. See After his death in twenty eleven, it came to light that Savile was a fucking horrendous sexual predator, with some four hundred and fifty confirmed cases and suspected as high as a thousand, almost exclusively children of both genders. It is absolutely mind boggling

the sheer volume. Now here's the question. Those allegations didn't come to light until twenty eleven, meaning in two thousand and three you'd have had no idea at the time as a kid, Saville would be a hero. So is that what's happening. Is this misguided idolization and cult like devotion to a child's fantasy, or is there a much darker option that Jimmy Crystal is one of Savill's victims and that the hero worship is just as fucking twisted as the man himself. Either way, my mind is in

ruins at the potential I mentioned. We're in a matrix reloaded wait and see situation, and there are some questions I have that I assume we'll be addressed, but if not, see matrix revolutions, the sequels could retroactively cancel out any goodwill that twenty eight years later has engendered. No Alpha has figured out there's an entire island of people and if you just wait till the tide is out. You and an army can just go get them in twenty eight years. To quote Jack Burton, I'm supposed to buy

this shit two thousand years. You can't find one broad to fit the bill. Come on, Dave, you must be doing something seriously wrong. Also, NATO is patrolling the island because, like the New York Maximum Security Penitentiary or the island of Los Angeles for that matter, once you go in, you don't come out. Nothing comes off the island. Okay.

For thirty years, no other nation has looked at this prime real estate the UK, which is now completely overgrown with forests and woodland and all this natural resources, and they thought, yeah, we'll just leave it abandoned. We won't just hover in helicopters with miniguns and eradicate the problem. Sure. Also there's a pretty huge leap that amounts to the equivalent of conventional amnesia, where Eyeli's condition allows her to basically be demented and out of it when the plot

needs her to be. It's a little school convenience and on occasion borders on that worst instinct of Stephen King, making the mystic out of the mentally challenged laws. Yes, but that's equibble less. Equibbled is the virulence of the rage infection in the first film and sequel. Just a drop of liquid, a spray from the infected will have you vomiting blood in moments you all remember Brendan Gleeson and that motherfucking bird. Only the Ray Fines character makes

an overture toward protection from the virus. Everyone else is just blithely trapesing through the countryside. At one point, an infected gets killed and a spray of blood splatters on Eyela's forehead and Spike just wipes it away. Yeah, I'm sure it didn't get in anywhere. I'm sure over the decades the IRUs has lessened in intensity or something. We'll see.

I have faith in Alex Garland. I know he had a trilogy of Judge Dread movies plan that involved the Cursed Earth and then Judge Death, so he's no stranger to strategizing sagas. I'm sure my concerns will be allayed. And plus there's the promise of Killian Murphy's return, so things are looking up as much as they can on an island with murderous lunatics and a pedophile worshiping Parkour Gang and giant zombie dongs. I heard an interview with

Alex Garland that I found pretty heartening. Maybe not hopeful, but at least it in gendered a sense of solidarity. He was speaking about the general feeling about those in power up until about twenty years ago. He said, it always seemed, through good or ill, that they were nothing if not progressive in their ideas and policies. It was always with an eye toward the future, toward keeping a nation strong by carrying it forward. And then all of a sudden that eye was turned back and there was

a yearning for the past. It started wistful and got aggressive, rage filled, if you will. I think they were there for the spark of that, and I hope they're there for the final tamping down of the ashes. I assume Garland has a plan for a new society at the end of this series. For once, I hope these films are precientt that is going to be the round up, suckers. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm killing myself doing these twice a week and a full time job. I'm not complaining.

I'm just saying I clearly love you and you should love me too by giving this show five stars and thumbs up. It's how the algorithm gets us new listeners. Another way is by you telling them, say, hey, man, you like zombies.