28 Years Later review: Danny Boyle’s latest zombie apocalypse effort fails to get the pulse going

Occasionally, review-proof films too big to fail might only be given a token preview to press and reviewers. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie fell into this category; a release with so much momentum and anticipation that nothing could dissuade cinemagoers.

But 28 Years Later does not fit that bill. The zombie franchise tore up a well-worn template in 2002 with 28 Days Later, introducing the world to both an unforgettable depiction of a modern British apocalypse as well as the leading-man attributes of one Cillian Murphy (who is executive producer this time around).

Danny Boyle’s indie horror (written by screenwriting ­supremo Alex Garland) was fresh, jarringly visceral, and recalibrated the undead as rabid, sprinting frenzy-feeders. Boyle and Garland sat out its 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, but Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s film capably expanded their grim vision, with Robert Carlyle starring.

The long-awaited reunion of Boyle, Garland and the “rage virus” is worthy content for discerning film columnists. So why all the secrecy?

If distributors decline to run a press preview, it can mean they either want to contain some ground-shuddering spoiler in the plot, or else the film is not very good. In the case of this new instalment, apparently more than 20 years in the planning, it sadly looks like the latter.

Both men have decided to snuff out the events of 28 Weeks Later. After a lacklustre opening sequence, we’re told the virus was contained in mainland ­Europe and is now only a concern in “the UK” – before showing us a map of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Ah, the Brits – never not at it.

Putting that to one side, we’re straight into a small but organised offshore island commune somewhere off the quarantined British Isles. Connected to the mainland by a tidal causeway, the community is entirely self-sufficient and maintains some semblance of societal normality inside its maritime fortress.

Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is taking 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) on a coming-of-age field trip to the mainland so he can show the lad how best to skewer the infected with a bow and arrow.

Obese zombies make for good target practice, but when they encounter an “alpha” – a smarter and stronger strain of infected – they are chased by naked, shrieking hordes straight out of a Woodstock festival mudfight.

While taking refuge, a distant bonfire had tweaked Spike’s curiosity. Back on the island, he learns this is a mysterious doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who the islanders have a strange mistrust of.

All Spike can think of is whether this hermit might be able to help Isla (Jodie Comer), his bed-ridden mother. And so he sneaks off with her in search of this story’s Colonel Kurtz figure.

Being released into a world that knows all too well what a real ­viral pandemic can look like, you’d think 28 Years Later would seek to hit this nerve in the public consciousness.

Danny Boyle explains the decision to shoot 28 Years Later on iPhone

But rarely, if ever, is there any sense of tangible dread in Boyle’s film. Real dread, the kind that made knuckles white and mouths dry 23 years ago watching the first film.

Instead, we just have a tired sequence of characters going out of their way to get into trouble only to barely make it out the other side, a dull and frustrating plot rhythm that Garland revives after last year’s equally flat Civil War.

You expect an element of the arch with Danny Boyle, but there are some artistic decisions in 28 Years Later that are not only self-indulgent and ill-fitting, they rob the tale of any tension.

A near-constant barrage of indie music in the soundtrack (Scottish hip-hop progsters Young Fathers are on score duties) lets all air out of the viral hellscape, as do a series of bizarre archive clips of medieval re-enactments and yeomanry spliced into the action.

Boyle and Garland are obviously entitled to add a smirk or two, but they can have no complaints if the muddled tone flies over the heads of audience members.

As for the farcical set piece that mushrooms up in the dying minutes, it is in such poor comedic taste that you wonder how it ever got cleared.

Taylor-Johnson, Comer and Fiennes bring some small semblance of integrity, but there is too much going wrong around them. A massive disappointment.

Two stars