Just as Ryan Coogler's Sinners reimagined the psychosexual fears of vampires through a racial American lens earlier this year, the 28 trilogy has been successful in large part thanks to its refreshes of zombie tropes. Instead of lumbering baddies marching towards our heroes in Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its ilk — evoking time and mortality creeping, slow and steady, towards us all — 28 Days Later (2002) supposed a new form of viral terror, one that ignited rage and hatred and speed for a new threat updated to the increasingly divided 21st century.

But in both 28 Days Later and its 2007 bastard predecessor 28 Weeks Later (not that bad, yet all but disavowed by the masterminds behind the original), what that virus meant for society was still to be seen. Perhaps that was because the jury was out in real life, too. The first film emphasized strong character development in the immediate aftermath of Britain's collapse, as well as some of the uglier responses of men pushed to their limits to survive, as informed by 9/11 and the chaos and militarism of the first years of the War on Terror. The second introduced the twist that the outbreak was contained to the United Kingdom and quickly managed by international forces under American military leadership, which despite its dissolution (for annoying plot reasons) suggested the possibility of an optimistic multilateral approach to crises that characterized pre-Recession thinking. 

Nearly two decades after that second installment, 28 Years Later finds us in many ways in a bleaker, crueler, and less cooperative world in real life, and director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland match that regression with on-screen horrors nearly as much made by man as by zombie. 

27 years of in-universe time after the US-led resettlement of Great Britain failed, the island has been completely quarantined by the international community, made into a pariah state whose human survivors are left to rebuild alone. One flourishing town is on the island of Lindisfarne, where a natural causeway connects residents to the mainland for hunting and gathering but protects them from the roaming infected. Spike, a 12-year-old boy (played with thoughtful maturity by newcomer and actual tween Alfie Williams), has grown up entirely in the time of quarantine under the watchful fatherly eye of his scavenger dad Jamie (a rugged Aaron Taylor-Johnson, sexy as ever off the heels of Kraven last year) and his mentally ill mom Isla (a sweaty and manic Jodie Comer). He looks to make a life in the village, where neighbors barter and technology is rudimentary at best, but is curious about the world beyond the causeway. 

Luckily, dad Jamie is one to push the envelope, and brings his son on a coming-of-age first "hunting" trip to kill an infected on the mainland despite his young age. Spike manages to shoot an obese and nearly blind infected, although glintingly seems to recognize its fundamental humanity underneath decades of decay and brainless feeding. But he can't ponder it long, as the duo are spotted and pursued by an Alpha (a giant infected, evolved to be smarter and more powerful) and narrowly escape back across the causeway. 

The trip whets Spike's palate for adventure though, and it dawns on him that more survivors on the mainland may include a doctor that could treat his fast-deteriorating mother. After a fight with Jamie over some revealed marital infidelity, Spike absconds with his mentally infantile mom across the causeway, searching for a doctor and trying to survive the infected hellscape.

After opening on a brutal zombie attack in 28 Years Later's first sequence, director Boyle barely lets up for the action-packed sub-two-hour runtime. Some of this year's most memorable sequences emerge in heart-pounding chases from eight-foot-tall Alphas, pitch-black commando firefights, and absolutely brutal kills. Cinematography of the grueling action from Anthony Dod Mantle adapts his characteristic kinetic, visceral style to be evocative (in a good way) of Sniper Elite kill cams, and will hopefully encourage greater democratization with filmmakers adapting iPhones to shoot. And while the dramatic sequences are a little plodding in comparison, they're full of talented supporting cast members, from a red-painted mad doctor who venerates death (Ralph Fiennes) to an eager yet cranky Swedish naval officer who brings news from the outside world (Edvin Ryding). With characters like these, small dramatic moments such as a shaky hand passing back a switchblade or a blowdart mercy killing are still great cinematic images, even if their storylines can feel slower and more melodramatic. 

But no matter how satisfying the arrow piercings and bone crunches are, Boyle and Garland skillfully caution audiences against the appeal of bellicose worldviews popular among demagogues and autocrats in today's more violent world. As Spike and Jamie set out to hunt, for example, video collages of historical British troops are paired with Rudyard Kipling's "Boots" (a poem about the psychological terrors of war that's become famous from the film's marketing materials) to create a sense of impending dread while simultaneously drawing a direct line between the violence and dehumanization of the past and the present war against the infected. 

In the same vein, militant isolationism is presented as tragic human nature yet condemned by the filmmakers at every opportunity. The Lindisfarne village, for example, is so secluded from the infected they don't see the pathetic states of their young children or the hope for life in their pregnant women. The international community, in turn, has so much wealth — in the form of nightclubs and smartphones and lip filler — but have turned their backs against the quarantined, killing those who try to escape and withholding vital medications and technologies. Preventing those that need it most from getting necessary treatments is a war crime, and one that countries are quick to ignore in fiction just as in real life. 28 Days Later takes seriously the adage that every border implies the violence of its maintenance, whether that means a village indoctrinating young children to kill the infected or a country deploying soldiers to prevent the quarantine escape of its neighbors. 

While it's exciting to see such a fresh vision to horror in a year that's already been good for the genre, and therefore perhaps a good thing that the team has already committed to a new trilogy, some of the only frustrating parts of 28 Years Later are when it leaves tantalizing details unexplored just to be bait for future installments. Throughout the film, for example, gory corpse displays are discovered branded with the name "JIMMY" yet when we finally get to know who Jimmy is in a frenetic scene, the credits roll. In another example, a particularly powerful moment arrives when an infected gives birth to a live human baby, a biological miracle that will no doubt lay groundwork for plot developments in sequels, yet receives barely any airtime in this movie. 

Despite the unfulfilling teases, I am excited to see how these loose threads unspool further in The Bone Temple — and am confident that whatever plans that politicians and businessmen draw up for a less collaborative, more suspicious, and increasingly violent global society, Boyle and Garland will rise to the occasion.