28 YEARS LATER : Tuesday 24th June 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated '28 YEARS LATER' at my local independent movie theatre this week, and this post-apocalyptic horror film is Co-Produced and Directed by Danny Boyle, and Written and Co-Produced by Alex Garland. It is the third in the '28 Days Later' film series, following 2002's '28 Days Later' and 2007's '28 Weeks Later', and is reportedly the first instalment in a new trilogy of films, of which the second film was shot back-to-back and titled '28 Years Later : The Bone Temple' which was Directed by Nia DaCosta, Written by Garland, and Produced by Boyle and Garland, and is due for release in mid-January 2026. The first two films in the franchise grossed a total Box Office haul of US$172M from combined production budgets of US$23M. The film went on release here in Australia, in the US and the UK last week, has so far grossed US$69M from a production budget of US$60M and has generated largely favourable critical reviews.

The films open in 2002, during the initial outbreak of the Rage Virus, where a group of young children are sat around a small TV screen watching an episode of the 'Teletubbies' in a remote house somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. A young lad named Jimmy (Rocco Haynes) flees from the house after being attacked by his infected family, in which all the other children are killed. He runs for shelter to the nearby church, where he finds his father (Sandy Batchelor), the local vicar, praying. Believing the outbreak to be the Day of Judgment, the vicar interprets the virus as an indicator of the end of times. He gives Jimmy a crucifix necklace and urges him to flee before allowing himself to be overwhelmed by a horde of the infected, so giving Jimmy the opportunity to hide and ultimately escape.

We then fast forward 28 years and although the Rage Virus has been eradicated from mainland Europe, the British Isles remains in indefinite quarantine, patrolled by offshore ships from across the continent. A survivor community lives on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England, connected by a fortified causeway that is only passable at low tide. Among them are Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a scavenger; his wife Isla (Jodie Comer), who has an unknown illness that keeps her virtually bedridden; and their twelve-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams). Jamie takes Spike to the mainland for a coming-of-age ritual. Village leadership reminds Spike of the dangers of leaving the island and while he is free to go beyond and return at will, search and rescue missions will not be launched for those who do not return.

On the mainland, after Spike has made his first kill of an infected, they make their way to an abandoned and dilapidated cottage where they find an infected, hanging upside down from the rafters by his feet and with a plastic bag over his head and with the name 'Jimmy' carved into his torso. A short time later they  encounter a pack of infected led by an Alpha, a mutated variant of the infected who are stronger and more intelligent. Returning to the cottage chased by the infected, Jamie is able to kill most of them with his bow and arrows as they escape into the attic. 

As the evening closes in they observe boats patrolling the sea and a fire burning up the coast in the distance. A stampeding deer herd triggers the partial collapse of the cottage, and Jamie and Spike are able to get out just in time. They return to Lindisfarne as the tide rises above the causeway to knee height, pursued by the Alpha who almost catches up to the pair, until sentries located in a look out tower use a large homemade crossbow loaded with a burning arrow to kill it. 

During a raucous celebration in which Jamie calls his son a Giant Killer and over exaggerates the number of infected Spike slayed, the boy witnesses his father kissing Rosey (Amy Cameron) and runs off in shock. He returns home to his grandfather who is looking after Spike's mother and learns that the fire was more than likely lit by Dr. Ian Kelson, a reclusive survivor on the mainland whom the villagers fear. According to rumours, dating back fifteen years, Kelson had been seen burning bodies in what seemed to be a ritualistic fashion. Disillusioned with his father, Spike secretly returns to the mainland with his mother, hoping to locate Kelson so that he can provide the necessary treatment for her. While resting for the night in a church, Isla kills an infected who had crept up on Spike, in her disconnected condition not recalling the next morning how it happened.

Swedish NATO soldier Erik Sundqvist (Edvin Ryding) and his unit are forced ashore after their patrol boat sinks off the coast of Scotland. Erik is the only survivor after an Alpha and a pack of infected attacked his unit. He comes across Spike and Isla in a run down Happy Eater roadside restaurant, rescuing them from another pack as the restaurant explodes in a ball of flame as a result of leaking benzene inside that had built up over many years. Erik joins their search for Kelson. The group comes across a derailed passenger train and Isla finds a pregnant infected woman inside one of the carriages temporarily exhibiting semi-docile behaviour, whom she helps give birth to an uninfected infant girl. 

Believing the baby is infected, Erik kills the mother in a hail of bullets and prepares to kill the child, but another dominant Alpha hearing the commotion intervenes and rips his head off. The Alpha chases Spike and Isla through the carriages and out across the surrounding fields, until Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) appears and subdues it with a morphine-laced blowdart. 

Taking the head of Erik, Kelson leads Spike, Isla, and the infant to his sanctuary, which is a temple built from sterilised bones of the countless number of bodies that have perished over the years from the virus, which he describes as his 'memento mori', which he explains to Spike means 'remember to die'. He later hands the skull of Erik to Spike to place on his temple.

After examining Isla, and using the limited resources he has available Kelson deduces that she has terminal cancer that has metastasized. Spike pleads with Kelson to cure her, but he explains that he is unable to do anything for his mother. At her request, he incapacitates Spike and euthanises her with a morphine dart. He later brings her sterilised skull to Spike, who climbs to the top of the temple and places it there as a memorial as the sun comes up. After another confrontation with the Alpha, Spike and Kelson escape, and Kelson encourages Spike to go home. Spike returns to Lindisfarne alone, leaving Isla (the uninfected baby whom he named after his mother) at the gate to the village with a note for Jamie explaining her origins and saying he will return when ready. Jamie, realising Spike is alone now on the mainland, tries to chase after him, but is prevented from doing so by the rising tide covering the causeway.

28 days later, Spike is seen on the mainland by the side of the road cooking a fish on an open camp fire when not far away he sees an infected, and waits until the infected is nearly upon him before killing it with his bow and arrow. When another appears Spike starts to run but when he rounds a corner his way his blocked by a steep rock fall. While trying to evade the infected, Spike is rescued by a gang of 'Jimmies' styled after Jimmy Savile, led by an adult Jimmy (Jack O'Connell) all dressed in garish track suits, with long blond hair and gold chains around their necks and gold rings on their fingers. After the Jimmies have dispensed with all the infected, Jimmy, with the inverted crucifix his father gave him around his neck, offers his hand to Spike in a sign of friendship and respect. 

With '28 Years Later' Director Danny Boyle and scribe Alex Garland have expanded on the world first seen in their two earlier films in the series, and delivered us with a zombie flick that morphs into a coming of age story with raw unbridled emotion at its heart, delivered by top notch performances from Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and newcomer Alfie Williams. When the violence comes its pretty graphic, as is to be expected from a world inhabited by the infected, but don't rely on jump scares or the intensity of its predecessors if that's what you're looking for. This character driven story is entertaining enough but its not great, and with that said, it's hard to judge this film because we're only seeing part of the story with two further instalments still to come. And as for the last five minutes - where did the inspiration for the 'Jimmies' come from I wonder? We'll just have to wait for 'The Bone Temple' I guess to find out.

'28 Years Later' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

SINNERS : Tuesday 22nd April 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'SINNERS' earlier this week, and this American period supernatural horror film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Ryan Coogler, whose former feature film output includes his big screen debut with 'Fruitvale Station' in 2013, which he would follow up with 'Creed' in 2015, 'Black Panther' in 2018 and 'Black Panther : Wakanda Forever' in 2022. This film was released last week too in the US, had a production budget of US$90M, has so far recovered US$87M, and has generated universal critical acclaim.

Here then, set in the early 1930's in the Southern United States during the height of the Jim Crow era, the film follows identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their home town in the Mississippi Delta after years in Chicago working for the mob. Using money stolen from gangsters, they purchase a sawmill from racist landowner Hogwood (David Maldonado) to start a juke joint for the local black community (an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African Americans in the southeastern USA). Their cousin Sammie 'Preacher Boy' Moore (Miles Caton), an aspiring guitarist, joins them despite opposition from his pastor father Jedidiah (Saul Williams), who warns his son that blues music is the music of the Devil. 

The twin brothers quickly set about recruiting other staff - pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) as performers, Smoke's estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) as cook, local Chinese shopkeepers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) as suppliers, and cotton field worker Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) as bouncer. Meanwhile, Stack reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who passes for white, and who tells Stack that she is still angry at him for abandoning her when he left for Chicago. Smoke and Annie argue over her belief in things otherworldly, as Annie insists her practices kept the twins safe, but Smoke bitterly reminds her that their infant daughter still died. Elsewhere, Irish-immigrant vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell) flees from Choctaw vampire hunters and violently turns a pair of local farmers into vampires.

At the joint's opening night, Sammie's guitar playing accompanied by Delta Slim's skills at the keyboard is remarkable, and unknowingly summons spirits of both past and present to join the already captivated crowd. The performance draws Remmick's attention, and he arrives with his two farmer vampires, offering money and music for entry. Suspicious, the twins hesitate and the vampires leave. Reminding the twins that the bar needs the income, Mary meets Remmick outside but becomes wary of his group. 

As she starts to return to the bar, Remmick glides into the air and bites her, turning her into one of his own. She returns inside, where she seduces Stack and bites him. Smoke intervenes and shoots her unloading several rounds into her at point blank range, but she is unharmed by regular bullets, gets up smiling and escapes. Cornbread is also attacked by other vampires and turned as well.

The juke joint quickly empties, and so the vampires attack and turn the fleeing patrons, including Bo. Stack comes round as a vampire, but Annie repels him with pickled garlic juice. She advises the survivors that only silver or wooden stakes can kill vampires, and that they cannot enter a building unless invited. Now leading a horde of vampires but still unable to enter the bar, Remmick tries his luck at negotiating. He praises Sammie's supernatural talent with the guitar and states that vampirism offers immortality, freedom, and escape from racism, and that he also wants to use Sammie's skills to summon the spirits of his lost community. He also warns that Hogwood, who secretly heads the local KKK, plans to attack the joint at dawn. When the survivors refuse his offer, Remmick and Bo confront Grace, threatening to attack her young daughter Lisa (Helena Hu). A desperate Grace dares the horde to attack the juke joint, inviting them in. In the ensuing battle, Grace and Annie are killed and Delta Slim sacrifices himself by slashing his own wrist with a broken bottle of Irish beer, distracting the horde with the smell of his own fresh blood from the remaining survivors. 

Smoke, Sammie, and Pearline attempt to escape, but Remmick and Stack ambush them. Smoke and Stack clash in an intense head to head and toe to toe fight, while Sammie and Pearline face off with Remmick. Pearline is bitten and begs Sammie to flee before turning. In a final confrontation, Sammie smashes his guitar over Remmick's head, before Smoke arrives just in time to kill him with a stake. As the sun rises, the vampire horde are all incinerated. 

Urging Sammie to flee, Smoke ambushes and kills Hogwood and his fellow Klan members in a hail of bullets, but is himself mortally shot. Before dying, he has a vision of Annie and their baby daughter. Sammie, battered, bruised and grief-stricken, returns to his father's church. His father pleads with him to renounce the Devil's music and seek salvation. Sammie refuses, leaving with the broken off neck of his guitar in hand.

In a mid-credits sequence we fast forward to October 1992, some sixty years later, to a bar in Chicago where Sammie (Buddy Guy) has just come off stage as a celebrated blues musician. Stack and Mary pay a visit to the now elderly Sammie, where Stack reveals that Smoke spared him that night at the juke joint, allowing him to go free under the condition that Sammie would live in peace. The couple offers Sammie the chance at immortality, but he declines. Stack asks Sammie to play a song, and Sammie obliges. Afterwards, as Stack and Mary are leaving, Sammie tells them that though that fateful night still haunts him, until the sun went down, it was the greatest day of his life. Stack agrees, and turning back to face Sammie says it was the last time he saw Smoke, the last time he saw the sun, and the only time he ever truly felt free.

With 'Sinners' Director Ryan Coogler has delivered us a genre bending film that is all at once part vampire horror film, part historical drama, part social thriller, and part all singing all dancing musical offering all wrapped up in a neat entertaining package that is exciting and will keep you engaged from start to finish. The performances of the principle cast are all top notch, and while the first half drags a little, Ryan Coogler uses this time wisely to establish the characters and their respective back stories so that we are invested in their joy and commitment to Smoke, Stack and the juke joint and then their pain and anguish as the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan. This film needs to be experienced in a movie theatre, and you won't be disappointed. It is worthy of the financial, critical and awards success that surely will follow for this original story.

'Sinners' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

MONEY MONSTER : Friday 3rd June 2016.

'MONEY MONSTER' which I saw on Friday is Jodie Foster's fourth Directorial outing after 'Little Man Tate', 'Home for the Holidays', and 'The Beaver' and in this Wall Street set thriller she teams up with George Clooney who Co-Produces and acts with Julia Roberts in the lead roles. Made for US$27M the film has so far recouped US$67M since its mid-May Premier at Cannes and its release Stateside that same day, but has received mixed reviews from critics, despite this probably rating as Foster's best Directorial outing so far.



Our story opens with the news channels broadcasting to us that yesterday 'IBIS Clear Capital' stocks nosedived losing angry investors over $800M because of a 'glitch' in the computer trading algorithm used by that company. As Wall Street financial wunderkind and fast talking stock trading guru Lee Gates (George Clooney) is about to go to air on his own cable network show 'Money Monster', he remains calm, calculating and lighthearted despite recommending this blue chip stock to his viewers just one month ago - and on Wall Street it seems Gates has some clout and has served his investor viewers well in the past. But not today! The count down begins to Gates going live on air, with his long time Director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), in his ear and in front of the studio monitors every step of the way. They laugh and joke - it's a Friday - and the week is drawing to a close - what are their dinner plans for that night they quip from opposite ends of the Friday night dinner spectrum.

When the cameras role, its time for action and 'Money Monster' goes live to air with Gates opening up with a song & dance routine to introduce the show, and then quickly gets to grips with the IBIS Clear Capital meltdown of yesterday. He shakes it off in a cavalier kinda way saying that as investors you gotta roll with the punches, ride the ups and downs and take the rough with the smooth. He is hoping to get the IBIS CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) on the show for some live Q&A, but has to settle for Chief Communications Officer Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) who is via a live feed on a monitor in the studio, because Camby is in flight somewhere heading to Geneva in one of his many private jets.

About five minutes into the show, a delivery man wanders onto the set carrying two boxes having negotiated his way easily enough past a napping team of security guards. Going along with what is thought to be a ruse, Gates soon realises that this delivery guy is no ordinary delivery guy as he pulls out a loaded weapon and starts firing randomly to draw attention to himself and capture the interest of the viewing public. The man in question is a Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) who we learn quickly wants answers from Gates as to how and why IBIS tanked yesterday costing investors $800M and him personally his inherited life savings of $60K in a stock that he recommended as a sure bet only weeks before. Having made his intentions known on live television, Budwell orders Gates to open a box, pull out and put on what is contained therein - a vest containing semtex explosives with a hair trigger that Budwell keeps firmly held in his hand, but will detonate as soon as his thumb is released from the trigger.

Once Gates has got over his initial panic, and Budwell has taken charge of the on-camera events, so Fenn swings into action taking charge of the off-camera events albeit in direct communication with Gates via his ear piece and the New York Police Department who quickly assemble a team on the ground. She orders everyone to vacate the studio except for essential cameramen, sound technicians and a couple of assistants in her control room.  The on-camera dialogue continues as Gates tries to calm the situation and gain some control with Fenn's help. Gradually, Gates starts to feel some sympathy for Budwell, realising that he is from a working class background, struggling to make ends meet and he has indirectly compounded the situation. To placate Budwell, Gates says that he will get him the answers, and so he organises a live link up with IBIS CCO Lester in Camby's absence to provide some clarity. That doesn't go well as she says that she too lost money and it was just a 'glitch', and hey, shit happens!

Unaccepting that it is just a glitch, behind the scenes Fenn starts to do some digging as does Lester by tracking down who created the algorithm in the first place eventually tracing the programmer to Seoul, where she gets him on the phone. He states clearly that there is no way  he algorithm could take such a substantial and slanted position - it is mathematical code not designed to do so, and such an event could only occur with human intervention - guaranteed! As more becomes known about Budwell, we learn that his mother died six months earlier leaving him the $60K that he invested in IBIS based on Gates more than positive endorsement. We also learn that he has a girlfriend heavily pregnant with their first child, and that he earns $14 an hour labouring - barely enough to scrape together a living for the two of them let alone a third on the way. The Police bring her to the studio where she goes on air to talk him around and diffuse the matter, but instead she publicly berates and humiliates him with all the voracity of a woman scorned and on live TV for all the world to hear and see.

The Police SWAT Team have arrived meanwhile and have gained access to the studio with the aim of taking out Gates by shooting the bombs receiver which is located directly over his kidney - shoot the receiver and the bomb is diffused, but that means shooting Gates and there is an 80% chance he'll survive, and hey, he's got two kidneys anyway! Gates and Fenn don't know this, but soon do when an evacuated Assistant to Fenn down on the street overhears a conversation involving the Police and the SWAT guys that this is about to unfold. By now, Gates is sympathetic to Budwells position and has taken pity on the struggling man with a cause. He hatches a plan to vacate the studio and get to Federal Hall and confront Camby who has since flown in from Johannesburg it is revealed, and not Geneva where everyone thought he had been. Using Budwell as cover to prevent the SWAT Team from shooting out the vest's receiver, the two vacate the building with a cameraman, the Police following behind and onlookers lining the streets.

In the meantime, Fenn is on the ground following and giving instructions from an outside broadcast van. She contacts a group of hackers based in Iceland to dig into Camby's whereabouts in Johannesburg and uncover the truth behind his dealings there. Locating Camby at Federal Hall before he could bolt having been cornered by Lester who divulged that she knew he had lied about his whereabouts, Gates and Budwell position him so that he can not run away. Confronting Camby with what they know, having received video evidence from the ever so helpful Icelandic hackers, it turns out that the IBIS CEO syphoned off $800M to invest in a South African mining company whose stock value would be devalued by a made up union strike that would run longer than expected as a result of bribing the miners union. Buying the undervalued shares, he would then profit in the billions when normal work resumed and the share price rose to its former position and then some. But the plan backfired, when the miners remained on strike and IBIS buckled under the weight of its own trading position - nothing therefore to do with a glitch in the algorithm. Confronted with the video evidence which has now been beamed around the world, Camby admits the wrong doing which is all that Budwell wanted, and so he gives himself up willingly, whilst Camby has to face trial for various violation counts under the Foreign Investment Acts.

I did enjoy 'Money Monster' - it moves along a good pace, it is a solid enough story reasonably well told, the characters you can relate to, the lead players of Clooney and Roberts share an on-screen chemistry that we have seen before and which is evident here too, and Director Foster has further honed her film making skills to deliver a thrilling, dramatic and at times satirical look at Wall Street, those who work it, those who invest in it and how we consume it. However, for me the final chapter when everything comes together just so is a little too convenient, too contrived and too quick. The whole thing unfolds over a few hours one Friday during day time TV and serves to bring the whole sorry story for Budwell and Gates to a close in the way that we know is going to be inevitable. Certainly worth a look, entertaining if a little predictable.

  

-Steve, at Odeon Online-