Danny Boyle’s ’28 Days Later’: A Zombie Series’s Evolving Narrative

The ’28 Days Later’ series by Danny Boyle requires patience, but offers considerable rewards. The characters are well-developed. The Swedish character Erik brings humour. The actor Edvin Ryding does a good job. The film presents a contrast between a beautiful landscape and the violence of the annihilated civilization. Danny Boyle directs his characters with great detail. The plot mixes between the gruesome and the strange. The main story of a virus infecting the mainland and a family falling apart is injected with warmth. The first half shows Spike with his father. The second half has more violence. Boyle shows all the violence of a wounded civilization. There is a tenderness in the heartwarming images of a young son parenting his own mother. There is a metaphor of the skulls that is expressive. Towards the end, the mother-son relationship is the main focus. The storytelling shows the trauma of living and the beauty of the past. ’28 Days Later’ is all heart.