Steve Newall: Flicks.co.nz editor on the release of 28 Years Later

Back in 2002, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland released  post-apocalyptic horror thriller 28 Days Later - which proved to be a monster hit.

The 2007 follow-up, 28 Weeks Later, wasn't as successful, but the duo came back together to release another sequel. 

Flicks.co.nz editor Steve Newall reveals whether 28 Years Later lives up to the hype.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good to see that Rod Stewart, after having to pull
out of some recent gigs because he wasn't feeling too good,
has managed to pull it together for Glastonbury, which is
taking place this weekend. So I love the way, Steve.
They seem to have these, you know, these old codgurees.
They roll them out at dast to reach the ligion slots,

(00:33):
the religion slot, that's what it's called.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Look if we can, if they can tear sir Sir
Rod away from his model railway, then good on them.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Tied to talk entertainment, Steve, who's the editor at Flextar
Coto And this is with us and twenty eight years
later is out, which of course is a funow up
to twenty eight days later in twenty eight weeks later.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yes, so this has now become a horror trilogy. Are
the first film made by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland,
released in two thousand and two and sort of maybe
sort of introduced the sort of fast zombies. Well it's
not technically zombies, but let's just go with it. To
the horror genre and also some really pioneering uses of

(01:16):
cinematography and very airy London has depicted in that film,
which takes place in the wake of a mass casualty event.
Shall we say. The sequel had no involvement from boil
or Garland particularly, but they have come back to make
this third entry and there's a lot to enjoy about it.

(01:37):
Set as the title suggests, nearly three decades on, the
UK has become completely quarantined the world life goes on
off its shores. We don't see any of that on screen,
but they've already kind of not regressed to a kind
of post apocalyptic lifestyle. But what we see is a
very breckxity traditional England or Scotland. And what's interesting about

(02:08):
this film to me is it kind of sets itself
up as a bit of a folk tale. There's a
young boys going on his first first mission to the mainland,
accompanied by his father. He's going to get his first kills.
It's like he's going for his first hunt. But it
also transpires his mum as quite sick at home, beyond
the capabilities of the community to help her, and so
he needs to set forth into the dark Woods to

(02:29):
find out what's going to save her. So it's got
very much kind of the setup of a kind of
medieval folk story.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
You mentioned, of course that that first film that it did,
it did shake up things a little bit. Does this
film do the same when it comes to filmmaking.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, there's some interesting choices here. I mean, Boyle is
always a ready dynamic filmmaker, but visually really interesting, pretty consistently.
A lot of this is shot on an iPhone, but
not like badly, like a top line iPhone set to
four K, all the settings kind of at max file size,

(03:03):
but also like big arrays of these, like I think
maybe like up to twenty arranged on a on a
movable rack, so we can do kind of bullet time
type effects, which there are. There are some pretty striking
shots in this film, But where it does kind of
fall down a bit is that it's very clear that

(03:23):
there are more films to come. This is a real
pet peeve of mine. I think it really kind of
takes away from the storytelling and the feeling of going
away from a movie with this kind of complete story.
It's a bit lost these days, I think. So I
left going okay, cool, we'll coming back to see more,
and the next installment is due and cinemas in January

(03:44):
of next year, so there's not a lot to wait,
but it is. Yeah, there's there's definitely some some interesting
stuff going on in this and really interesting performance from
Ray Fine in this film as well. So yeah, so
some good stuff there for horror fans, but not for
the faint of heart and not particularly fast moving horror
must be seid as well.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Now. The Docky Film Festival starts on Wednesday, always a
consistently good documentary festival.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah. Choker forty nine features, twenty nine shorts and twelve
amissive projects are in the twenty twenty five program. As
you mentioned, it starts in Auckland next week. It's also
coming to Wellington and christ Church in July and nationwide
available for streaming as well. But I just thought I
mentioned a couple of highlights that have jumped out. I
haven't seen these yet, but these are things that I'm
looking forward to checking out from this year's program. First

(04:35):
is Mana Muana mana Tangata doco that follows the battle
to save Mardi fishing rights. Described as a powerful tale
of resilience and determination, also notice the New Zealand centric
No Tears on the Field, which follows aspiring female rugby
players in New Zealand's heartland who are shadowing glass ceilings

(04:56):
and strange journey the story of Rocky Horror. This feels
like a documentary that should have been made decades ago.
Right Oh yeah, but looks like we've got Richard O'Brien's
involvement in this, and yeah, very keen to find out
more about the making of this cult classic with a
really interesting New Zealand connection. And if I can throw

(05:18):
one international selection into the mix as well, let's highlight
mister Nobody against Putin.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I guess I want to see that's.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
The sort of person who can defy an autocratic propaganda machine.
Isn't necessarily an activist or a freedom fighter. Sometimes they're
a teacher.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, I know that looks fascinating. So an amazing collection
of local and international documentaries are going to be screening
doc eag dot NZ is where you need to go
to find the program and I think there's something there
for everyone, So enjoy. Thank you so much. Save you'll
ketch up next week.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
live to news talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
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