For this latest instalment of the viral-zombie franchise, Danny Boyle has passed the baton – or rather bone – to director Nia DaCosta who brings to the episodic project the stomach-churning slasher skills seen in her follow-up to Candyman.
Here the serial killer is self-styled satanist Sir Jimmy, played by Jack O’Connell with such commanding panache he would be a worthy opponent even of psycho killer specialist Jesse Plemons (from Breaking Bad to the Alex Garland-written and directed Civil War).
But the 28 series has always had a higher IQ than most other horror franchises. It make audiences think about their own world, not just the apocalyptic one on screen. It was impossible not to see last year’s 28 film, in which Britain regresses to primitivism while Europe has purged itself of the virus, as a post-Brexit commentary.
O’Connell’s Jimmy has another peculiarly British association. His naturally blond mop is aped by his bewigged knife-wielding adolescent disciples whose childlike capacity for pitiless cruelty qualifies them for the gang. Collectively known as the Jimmies, they all are too young to realise their look and adopted name is shared by a TV presenter and child abuser who lived long before they were born. Pity any uninfected human who falls into their clutches. They will be strung up and “de-shirted”, which, be warned, is as awful as it sounds.
All this is done in the name of “charity” and in the service of “Old Nick”, preaches Sir Jimmy, who no doubt learnt the terms from his fire-and-brimstone preacher father who in Boyle’s sequel of last year we see willingly submit his body to a horde of infected zombies, watched by his son.
Little did we know what writer Garland – who has been with the series since the beginning – had in store for the character when we first saw Jimmy as an innocent child. It is this narrative through-line that justifies the gruesome torture scenes in the latest film, but only just.
The salve to the barbarity is Ralph Fiennes’ return to the role of the civilised Dr Kelson, architect and builder of the ossuary made of bleached human bones, his monument to the dead. Using morphine-tipped blow-darts he tames the giant king of the crazed viral zombies known as Alpha. Kelson and his new bestie get stoned together.
The doctor sees a possible cure in the way the drug relieves the infected of their rage. But his encounter with Sir Jimmy, who at first believes Kelson to be the devil, is a knuckle-whitening climax to the trilogy. It sees barbarity pitted against civility. That we so desperately want the latter to win is proof that the heart of this harrowing trilogy is in the right place.
Cert 18
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