28 Years Later Review

folks, this week we review 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle's 2025 film about the horrors of being British and, a sneaky Medievalist tale, although with a twist. we go in-depth about the Medieval aspects of the small community on Lindisfarne and why the film turns this bucolic nostalgia on its head. but there's more, including talk of zombie members, life finding a way, memento mori, and the horrific introduction of the Jimmy gang. we had a lot of fun with this one and it's a truly thought-provoking film, enjoy!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello friend, what's oh mate, there's a lot of zombie dick.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Okay, like.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
A lot of zombie dick and uh, just both in
terms of the number scene and uh the.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Okay, I was undered the impression.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
The omni presence of the well.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
But there was more than one big zombie hog.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Oh yeah, and like and so and I thought that
when everyone was talking about like the zombies hanging dong,
like the zombie hanging dong, I was like, Okay, there's
gonna be like one big dog. But then there were
just like so many huge like monster dogs.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
The one on what is going on right, the one
on the main guy, good gallic man. I don't even
know how you I don't even know how you would
like walk around like.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I just know, like, I mean, that is beyond me.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
He's a real disadvantage, I think since they're all naked,
because I really think you would want some support for
that thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Good god man, Yeah, that's gonna give you need trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
I don't know re least you know, like it's.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Good for him, I guess. I mean I.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Didn't fulfill him, Luke. No it didn't. No, it did it.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
No, I don't. I am not I don't begrudge anyone
their size. God like literally good for him. Like I
don't like that's real.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I thought that was like a stunt cock.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but I mean
like they're like I mean, you know, they're big. Uh,
Like they're they're ones that are that general size, And
like every time I see it, I'm like, man, that
is amazing for you. I feel like that would make
my life very I don't just listen.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
You know, every monster hog I've ever like come across
in the wild, it's just like it's a really different landscape.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
They're not like.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
They're more you know, compact counterparts, Like they don't really like,
for example, it takes a lot of blood on something
like that is all I'm saying. Like that's like you
go lightheaded, right, It's just like where's it, where's it
all gonna come from?

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Dog? Right?

Speaker 1 (02:15):
But I do like to think of you know, whoever's
like doing special effects, like working lovingly on the fake
zombie hog.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, carefully, gotta get the veins just right, Gotta get
them pop in.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
It's like, oh, even slave it over that.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
To get the same for hours. Yeah, gotta get the
seam just right that part where it looks like your
balls have been stitched together for some reason. Gotta get that.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Perfect yeah in there doing like you know, stipulation on it.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
M hmm, beautiful as.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I mean, like I did feel like I was in
Always Sunny though, like it very much to me, felt
like like, you know, basically the gang from It's Always
Sunny was asked to come into like to be the
the screen test, and they're like, why aren't the zombies
hanging dong? Like it just seems like this is a

(03:09):
direct request mm hmmm from Charlie Day or something. But
you know, I'm fine with it, Like I got.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
You know, I was a single issue voter on this
more zombie dong and they gave it to me. Here,
I'll show up, all right, let's just get in I
don't need Yeah, let's get it there like a rich text.

(04:08):
Oh hello, welcome back to We're not so.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Different zombie hog.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
That's right, it's just so there and like.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
There must be other like zombie hogs out there in
the world, but it's just like this is the first
one that I've really ever.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, and you're just like huh m hmm. I mean like, yeah,
I guess. Yeah, but yeah, we'll get to it. Folks. Uh, yeah,
this is your favorite medieval history podcast, and we are here.

(04:59):
I'm Luke. That's the gre Eleanor, and we are here
to talk about you know, it's a folks, it's a
movie today. Yeah, today we're reviewing Danny Boyle's twenty twenty
five horror sequel twenty eight years Later, a movie about

(05:19):
the horrors of being British. At first, blush, you might
think it's an odd choice for our little medieval show,
but I assure you it will start to make sense soon.
You might also think it's odd we didn't do this
for Halloween, but you know what, shut up to point out?

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, well, speacause he lives in my heart all year round.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
But anyway, indeed, anyway, Despite not being set in the
Middle Ages, there are plenty of callbacks and references, not
the least of which is that these people have regressed
back to medieval communal living. But that's not necessarily a
good thing in this case. It's also mostly situated on

(05:59):
the island of Linda's Farn, Or directly across a narrow
causeway from it, and Lindasvarn is famous for many medieval things,
most notably being the landing spot of the first Viking
invasion of Britain in seven ninety three. Then there's a
persistent and quite beautiful explanation and example of a memento
may the medieval art and literary trope that reminds us

(06:22):
that we must all face death, no matter our situation
in life. Also, there's a zombie with a really huge hog,
and I mean I have to imagine they had huge
hogs back then too. You know, we really need to
discover a memoir from a medieval size queen postasee, you know,
just so we can put this to rest, you know.
Plus the stunning return of the English longbowm into prominence

(06:44):
out of absolutely nowhere, and a number of visual references
to the Battle of Agincore. Truly, there's a lot of
medieval influence here, and even a bit of post apocalyptic
retrofuturist medievalism where a modern society has atrofied and back
to an earlier time, something I really enjoyed. But director
at any Boyle and writer Alex Garland aren't necessarily meaning

(07:07):
this as an affection in the affectionate way that we
do on the show. While we admire and are possibly
even envious of the close knit community we see on
Linda's farm in the film, it is also helplessly, hopelessly
insular and detached from everything around it. Not unlike Britain
following Brexit and during COVID nineteen, a community offers an

(07:30):
almost hopeful glimpse of humanity surviving at the margins, but
even so it is mostly absorbed with maintaining its few
creature comforts and doing its best to ignore the broader
catastrophe and folding around it. The Big Party has a
festive atmosphere and seems like a great time, but also
relies on a sense of nostalgia for a false memory

(07:50):
of a Briton that never really existed, with an old
image of Queen Victoria still haunting the walls. And that's
before you read the community's motto, which is fail we may,
but go on we must, which sounds like the most
cynical blitz propaganda Britain ever produced. The film takes great
pains to make all of this clear for a while,

(08:13):
intercutting and reading of Rudyard Kipling's poem Boots, which is
about a soldier in the Second Boer War, as scenes
from propagandistic film depictions of Avancore, Agincore and marching World
War Two British soldiers play. The message is clear, while
we long for certain aspects of past life to return,

(08:37):
naval gazing and solely looking to a false version of
the past with no thought for how you will move
forward and try to improve the situation is no way
to live. Total isolation from the world, even if it's
a world filled with horrors, is no way to live
and no place to raise children. Realistically, is it even
human society at all anymore? It's truly entertaining and thralling

(08:59):
film with one central theme. You do not hate the
decaying husk of the British Empire nearly enough, that really
is it. Danny Boyle hates England far more than I
ever could. I mean, and I guess I guess. I
guess he hates it in the way that only like
in some ways people who are from those places like

(09:21):
it's you have. You have a different kind of intense
hatred for it that other people can't match. Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I think that it's interesting because like within it
there are these glimmers, I would argue of the good
things oh yeah about it here, you know. And I
say that because because I think that one of the
things that's being positive here is the difference between English
people or British people and British niss. I think that's

(09:52):
those are the two things that are kind of like
in the balance here. So you kind of have the
individual communal which can be interesting and good and like
an interesting history which you can you know, like obviously
be a person like me and be like, well, I'm

(10:12):
quite I'm quite enthralled with that, right, But then that
is that there are, you know, the inherent problems. But
then I think that he also did a great job
of sort of sat high rizing the EU relationship with

(10:33):
us on this terrible island as well, and I thought that.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Was actually really prescient and interesting. So it's like.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Obviously, I mean, I guess like, let's just we should
just get right into it, because I've got a lot
to say.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, So just a couple of things
before you get started. This is your warning. We're about
to spoil the entire spoil years later, twenty eight days later,
I will mention twenty eight weeks later once, which may
be the only time, but that's fine, but.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Got one good thing in it, a pub joke.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Also Indriva and his shifting American accents. I do love. Yeah,
but uh, we're also I mean, look, guys, this is
this is an R rated, a hard R rated horror movie.
There's it's grizzly, it is gory. There are gruesome kills.
They're you know, like peep, little kids, kids die, everyone does.

(11:32):
Look you, guys, I'm just telling you if you're squeamish
or you might have not on this episode with kids around,
dear God and they just kids. Yeah, like, but you's
not going to hold off on this one anyway. Yeah. Look,
it's the movie's gratuitous violence, in nuity, nudity. Just saying

(11:53):
that upfront, so you know, so you could be forewarned,
because I mean, if you're if you are, if you
have a week's stomach for these things, you could absolutely
not make it through this movie. And that's perfectly fine.
You know, my wife hates extreme gored movies. We you know,
she does not watch horror movies. And that's fine, you know,
to each their own albumn. But yeah, so the other

(12:16):
thing is, this is just the story so far. If
you're unfamiliar with the series or have forgotten. Here's What's
going on. Twenty eight Days Later, which was written and
directed by Danny Boyle and released in two thousand and two,
tells the story of how the island of Britain is
overrun by ultrafast, ultraviolent, ultra mad zombies. These zombies were
created when animal testing on the Rage virus broke containment

(12:39):
and spread within four weeks. The album was a post
apocalyptic alescape, and the film follows Killian Murphy as he
awakes from a coma and meets up with a small
group and they try to reclaim their humanity from the
zombies and evil human impulses. It was a runaway success,
and it was also a brutal takedown of British social

(13:00):
and cultural decline. That's going to be a thing. In
twenty seven, twenty eight weeks Later, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo,
was released and it shows some survivors trying to get
by as NATO forces land on the island to help
after the zombies begin dying from starvation. They're going to
rebuild it. The NATO team and a large group of

(13:22):
survivors are particulaarbly overrun, and the final scene of the
film shows zombies emerging from the Channel tunnel on the
French side, having made it to the continent. It was
pretty forgettable outside of Idris Elba's incredible good looks and
ever shifting American accent. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
That's where we are. This movie takes place in the

(13:44):
year twenty thirty, twenty eight years later. Okay, okay, let's
I guess we've already done some opening thoughts here, so
let's talk about the community at Linda's Farn, and we're
going to talk about it for a second. But before
we get there, I have to talk about the fucking causeway.
I have to talk about it there. This is like,

(14:05):
this right here is the gimmick that pulled me in,
Like I'm already in the tank for this movie, because
I twenty eight Days Later is literally one of my
favorite horror movies of all time, up there with Event
Horizon and you know the great's like Texas Chainsaw Masker
and all that. Anyway, but this causeway thing where it

(14:25):
sinks down. You know, you have a tidal island. It's
connected when the tide is low and it's disconnected. It's
an island when the tide is high. Love it. Amazing stuff.
This is a thing throughout the film. You can't cross
over to Linda's farn when the causeway is submerged because
there's a big current through there and it will sweep

(14:47):
you out to sea and you'll die. So yeah, it's
just it's the perfect little it's the perfect thing to
include in your movie because like there's no way to
surmount it, Like you have to be like you you
either have to be there for this like four or
five hour period or however long it is, and if

(15:09):
you're not well, then you have to stay wherever you
are until the next day. Quite but yeah, this causeway
thing is great. The time lapse video they use with
it is fantastic. We'll talk about it more later, but
like they did this with like a like a series
of like crazy rigs and like super advanced iPhones, and

(15:31):
it's incredible. The the the shots are so well done.
There's just like all of these like incredible like up close,
extremely up close shots that like you can't it's harder
to get with like a larger, larger film cameras.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
It's just yeah, it's fantastic, all right.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
But the big thing for us here, and the thing
that drew this show to this movie, is this community
on the island of Lindis Farn. Now, if you don't
know Linda's Farren, we've we've talked about it a few times.
Linda's Farn is a small tidal island on the eastern

(16:12):
coast of Britain up near It's just north of York,
kind of close to Newcastle, way up there. It's a
tiny island that has the ruins of a lovely abbey
on it. The abbey was there for many years during
the Middle Ages. However, this was the spot where the

(16:33):
Vikings initially landed in seven ninety three, and so it's
kind of famous for that. But in the year twenty thirty,
these survivors have founded a community and they are there
and they have like a lovely little society. They all
have their little jobs, you know, like it's the real

(16:55):
version of what would your job be after the Revolution?
But it's like, Okay, you're going to be the watchtower
I or the person who who fletches arrows or the
person you know who strings boat, Like what is your
job going to be? And they've all got it and everything,
and it's lovely and they're happy and you know they're
they're making it and it's it's so lovely. So Eleanor

(17:18):
you were looking at this like before we talk about
like what's being implied here and stuff like that, the
medieval aspects of this are just jumping out immediately. Oh,
like they didn't have if they didn't have a few
working machines like you, this might as well be like,
you know, whenever.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
And I'm so obviously like a shout out to my
girl lind as Far and I still haven't been, which
is like a fuck like here, like insert first rant
about what's wrong with this goddamn country.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
I gotta walk that fucking causeway.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
I have to, like I have to.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
And but the thing is I constantly talk about it.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
I constantly talked about how badly I.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Want to go to lindas Far and I've been up
to Northumberland lots of times. You know, I'm always going
up to ad Guy fr And and everything like that.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
But when you.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Are like getting the train there and you by the
time you shell up for a hotel and everything, like
it's more expensive for me to go to Linda's farn
than it is for me to go to Paris and insane,
and that's just so fucking stupid, right, Like it's just
like that is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing to say.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
So I haven't been right.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
I go by a lot because like when you're on
the train up to Edinburgh, you go past it. Again,
when I'm I'm going up to Agaffrin and stuff, I
go past, you know, like you gt you pass it
and I go, oh, there's shoes. I love her so
like I'm obsessed with her. Interestingly in Northumberland also like
a sidebar Northumberland hidden gym.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
I should go up there.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
It's just whatever, but it is spectacularly fucking beautiful.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh it's gorgeous. This movie is, Oh my god, it's sane.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Like a little bit unsung is Northumberland. If you want castles,
they have them. If you want monasteries, they have them.
There is just like that, just these spectacular rolling hills.
It's the food is out of control good because like
you've got really great fishing industry there and stuff like that.
So you know, like all of this, all of this right,
but yeah, it's really interesting a to kind of like

(19:12):
see this like medieval place repurposed for this you know,
great and important thing. And it made me think about
like all the people who sort of would live in
like the town surrounding a thing. Because so for example,
even places like Mont se Michelle, there's usually like a
little town that springs up in order to service the monastery.
So the monastery, yeah, in theory, they're doing everything for themselves,
in practice not so much, right, So you're gonna have

(19:34):
people who live in like a little town to look
after them.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
And I loved, you know.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Like watching the Fletching for example, and I and I
did like the kind of like pulled togetherness of it,
like you know, like the little signs, like the little
signs that said, you know, we like use resources wisely
and things like that, where like hell yeah, I'm like

(20:01):
finally like yeah doing it exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's good stuff.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
And like you know, watching them kind of like reuse
bicycles and things like that, I was like, hell yeah, this.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
This all goes so hard.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
And I thought that was really like it's really cute
how like they have these communal parties and they have
like these ways of doing things that are really nice.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
And then you know and then, so.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
This community is gorgeous, and I was reading some stuff
about it, and I mean they the intent was to
make you, like you long for this kind of community.
You don't long for that kind of isolation, but you
do long for this like walking through the street knowing
all these people going to a party and your neighbors
are there, and everybody's.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Just having a real job.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yes, having a real job where you work with your hands,
like you know, living in nature, like all of these
things are fantastic, but you're also supposed to start to
see there's some real weird stuff about it. So one
thing is that the thing about the community is that

(21:15):
you can go off the island as much as you want.
You can do that is you know the rules everything
like that, and you can go to the mainland and
they have to do that for like supplies to get
more wood and all that sort of stuff. But if
you don't come back, no one will go look for you.
And that's because like some incidents from the past where
a few people had died or something like that, and

(21:35):
you're like, wow, okay, that makes sense. However, However, however,
this community, which has been around for according to the
signs and stuff they have like twenty eight years the
better part of that time, it's completely cut off from
like everything. Like a big plot point in this is

(22:01):
this family, Jamie, the mom, Ila and their son Spike,
and the mom Isla has just these terrible fits, and
I mean it's very it's very clear to me early
on that she had some form of like brain cancer
or just like severe like issue because she would have
like normal, like she'd be normal for a minute and

(22:23):
then she'd freak out. She it's hard for her to
get out of the bed, you know, all that sort
of stuff. But number one, no one talks about this
like it's cancer, despite the fact that like people who
had lived like when society was still a thing before
two thousand and two, before the virus came along, like

(22:45):
they would have known what cancer is. And they say
on the island, they haven't had a doctor in a
long time. But a big part of this movie is
that Spike will try to save his mom by going
to find a doctor, and they find a doctor like
a mile and a half inland on the mainland, and
it's like wait what and like we could we'll talk

(23:08):
about it more later, but come find out this doctor
has access to like some medical supplies and stuff. He's
been like living and building this like incredible monument to
humanity and death and everything like that. And he's just
doing that. And these people have been living there without
a doctor for like it seems like at least a
decade and they haven't done anything about it. At one point,

(23:31):
a building catches on fire, and like they still have
machines and stuff, but they haven't like run any pipes
or anything to where they could like put this out.
They are bringing in water buckets to throw to douse
water on this, like medieval people. And you're like, yeah,
I mean it might be difficult to find some supplies
and stuff like that, but if you're making but if

(23:52):
people are making like weekly supply runs to the mainland PVC,
it's not that hard to find. Like PVC piping is
not that hard to find, and irrigation is not a
difficult thing to do. People did it in Mesopotamia six
thousand years ago.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Like it like a plumber, Yeah, surely a plumber made.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
It, right.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, like somebody who like under or somebody who could
just like like, this community does not look outward at all,
and it does not look toward the future at all.
Everything is about protecting this thing, and it's not it's
not as it stands, not growing it not bringing in

(24:38):
more people to help and and you know, and finding
survivors and making it a refuge for like many people.
They have this community. It's however large it is, and
you know, it is what it is, and it's like

(24:58):
it's not like and they still have like they have
the sign that you know, like we may not make it,
but go on, we must. And they still have like
a picture of Queen Victoria up.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
And you're like, they have a picture of Queen Elizabeth
as well.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Elizabeth. I'm sorry, yeah uh And you're like, why what
do you Britain doesn't exist anymore, Like.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, I think that the English flag having the English
flag up, I was like.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
The institutions that like these people are clinging to, not
like they have failed even harder than like the institutions
in our world right now, Like they the ultimate failure.
The the island was completely taken over. They could not
do anything about it. They failed utterly and completely to
protect not only themselves but anyone on the island. And

(25:46):
these people are just like that was great man, all right,
let's Uh, let's go out for your Let's go out for.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Your ritual blood, your ritual, your your ritual kill.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, and like and another thing like if you think
about it a little down the line, if this community
doesn't grow, like in a couple of generations, there's gonna
be a lot of like real close inbreeding going on.
Like I mean, like cause there's I don't know, maybe
seventy ish people here. Like it's you know, and and

(26:22):
it's beautiful for that, but like the like you are,
you are supposed to look at his beauty, but underneath
the beauty there's this just like malevolent subcurrent of like
toxic nostalgia and like I mean, you know it's authoritarian

(26:42):
to to to a greater and lesser extent.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
You know, at any time you see a an English
flag being shown, not in a football context, you are
in trouble. Like that's just like as a general rule
of thumb, that's a thing right where it's like if
if there, if England is not about to play football,

(27:06):
mm I don't love it. You know, there's like there's
no way for it to not come across as a
threat to me. That's an immigrant, right, Yeah, It's.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Like yeah, okay, And I mean Boyle is he's not
the same age or the same uh generation as you
know we talked about with Ridley Scott or George Lucas,
but he is definitely in the mold as being a
a Hollywood lib to a certain extents. And one of
those is the modern British state is so evil, like

(27:42):
it's it's evil on top of it, like it's it's
just a it's just hell. And I mean, like this
movie goes to great pains to like you've got like
there's this movie version of the Battle of Agincore that plays,
you know, especially while like it shows the boys are
like practicing their their bow and arrow skills and everything

(28:05):
like that, and this poem Boots is being read and
like this extreme like V for Vendetta in nineteen eighty
four style monologue Boots Boots, Boots look up in the air,
look and you're just like, okay, this is kind of creepy.

(28:26):
And then like occasionally you'll see like soldier, like British
soldiers like marching like World War two and stuff like that,
and you're just like what the fuck and it's laying
it on that like not only is England bad, now.
But like any of these things that you grope back

(28:47):
for to talk about Britishness and the inherent goodness of
the empire or Britishness or nationalism or whatever, these are flawed.
Were looking back on something that was either stupid or
evil or both. Like you're thinking about agent cors and

(29:09):
agin corps that didn't exist because it wasn't nights firing
out of a castle, you know, at a rabble of frenchmen.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
And you like also fundamentally that it's an offensive war,
right like what you know, Like, don't get me wrong,
it's interesting the long bows, right like that, and uh,
you know I have always and.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
It's funny when French nobles die in the mud.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
But oh yeah, we love that.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
And I'm on the record as being pro like longbow,
pro crossbow, because I like that they are the weapons
of ordinary people, and I'm more interested in ordinary people
than I am in fancy the lads. But it's like
it's still not like ashin Courts doesn't to be proud of, right,
It's like, you.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Know, no, it's not. Yeah, the one hundred Years War
is nothing to be proud of for either of you.
Like it just turns you into nationalists who hated each other,
and you thoughtw for fucking like the Edge of Klais
for another one hundred years, and then we're mad about
it for another three or four hundred after.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Like it's like like it's it is all around a
bad thing for ordinary people, right, and so yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
And then you've got this, uh, well sorry, and you've
got this poem that like it's like it is a
it's it's a very good poem because Rudyard Kipling is
an incredible like he was an incredible writer despite all
of the like bad things that he had going wrong.
But like this is a poem about like a guy
in the Boer Wars, which is just like the most

(30:35):
colonialist like the only worst colonial sins that the British
did were against the Indian or against the Indians and
the Bengalis. Like it's like and and then it's calling
back to World War two and it's like and but
it's not like the World War two, like oh yeah,

(30:55):
England did so much for it. It's like the World
War two of like cowering in your home while people
on the mainland like suffer and die and lead all
these efforts and everything, and you just have to sit
here and you know, stiff up or deal with it.
And it's just like no matter what you look to,
it's a curse. It's a plague. And this applies to

(31:16):
America too, Like like it works because Britain is a
small island and you could see like you know, the
rest of the people being like fine, whatever, fuck it,
just quarantine the thing, don't let anyone across whatever. But
like it works for America too because like when you
do like the American ness thing and you're like looking
back to all this stuff, like you know, there's World

(31:40):
War two and there's the North fighting in the Civil War,
and that's pretty much the only good things the American
state has ever done. And even War two, they did
it for the wrong fucking reason. Like yeah, it's yeah,
I'm sorry you were saying something.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Oh no, I mean I just think that it is.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
It is quite interesting, right because like on the one hand,
I do like camaraderie, pints and like going down on
someone who isn't your wife on a Friday night. Like
I think that these are all this is the best
of British All right, Okay, this is what we're good at.
This is this is the thing that we do. Okay,

(32:21):
but you know it's not. I just think that you
shouldn't have to go through all the rest of it
to get the pints in the camaraderie and the cheeky
oral away.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah, oh all right, let's okay. So like basically this
movie starts out and it's got boils penchant for like
having either like church choir music or like silly kid
songs playing over like just horrific events. And it's two

(32:58):
thousand and two. The virus, the outbreak has just started.
It's in the north of England, and these kids are
being put into a room and they're watching Teletubbies with
like the sound way up, and then the parents are
like stay in there, stay in there. And then of
course the zombies break in and it's horrible, and this
one kid named Jimmy like he's able to escape. His
mom holds off like a zombie is attacking her for

(33:19):
long enough so he can leave, and he runs out
and he runs across to like a church and he
goes in there and he finds his dad praying, and
his dad's like a priest of some kind, and he
you know, and his dad's like it's the Day of Judgment, Boy,
the Day of Judgment. Is he all right, like his
crucifix or is rosary or whatever, and and then like

(33:42):
he's like taken and becomes a zombie. And we see
this kid, Jimmy, he just runs off into you know,
into the nothingness to try and survive. So, you know,
then we get twenty eight years later and we find
out that at the end of weeks later, when they
made it across to France, however many of them made

(34:05):
it across, it did not work. And uh, they killed everybody,
all the all the effect that who got across, and
they you know, destroyed or damned up the chunnel or
whatever the fuck they did. And the island of Britain
has been quarantined completely any anything connected to it, including

(34:26):
like Linda's farm with the causeway, and uh, and there
are boats there are like NATO and UN and boats
that patrol to keep every you know, to keep to
keep it on the island. So like at first you're like, God, damn,
this is awful, because I mean, this is a humanitarian
disaster for like the people who are still stuck on
this island, and I mean they could clearly still see

(34:47):
they are because like it's like satellite photos. You could
be like, oh huh yeah, look at all those people,
like they have a little society there. We could help them.
That's fine, don't worry about it. And uh, we get,
we get. As we talked about earlier. We see the
island of Lindisfarne and we see this community and they're
fletching arrows and it's a big day. And this kid

(35:11):
named Spike, who's like twelve, is gearing up and he's
going to go out and he's going to get his
first kill. It's going to make him a man, as
they think in their society, or at least enter him
into adulthood. And he's getting ready, and you know, we
see his mom and his mom is like, oh, he's
too young, and his dad's like it's fine, it's fine.

(35:36):
He's okay. He's going to be great, you know. And
the mom is clearly having these like episodes. She's going
in and out. She's played by Jody Comer, and she
just is not handling things very well. She's like sweating,
she can't. She having troubolicate out of bed, the whole thing,
and she forgets stuff very easily. But then we see

(35:59):
the dad who's played by Aaron Taylor Johnson. And I
will say this to this point, I've seen Aaron Taylor
Johnson in a bunch of stuff, and usually it's just
he's just like a guy and like a forgettable role
in an action movie. Like he was like the on
the ground like marine guy in the twenty fourteen American
Godzilla movie, which didn't give him much to deal with.

(36:22):
But you know whatever, in this movie, he's fucking incredible.
I do not know where that Scottish accent came from, man,
I really don't. It was great, like he just he
was spent out. He's really good and he apparently like
essentially adopted this kid who plays Spike while they were
on set and like taught him everything he knows about acting.

(36:42):
It was very sweet, like it was a big like
there's a behind the scenes thing about it. It's very cute.
So they're going out and they're like working through like
this is what's gonna happen, this is what you're gonna do.
And as they walk out into the town or into
the little community, like all these people are like, you
got Spike, it's your turn. You got this woo, You're

(37:03):
like you know that it's it's like a whole thing,
and you're like, oh, that's so sweet, this is so nice.
And then and then you get there and they're like,
all right, here's the deal. If you leave and you
don't come back, we're not gonna go search for it.
And you're like, huh, I guess that is a I mean,
I guess these are really tough times, and I guess
you do have to have some some kind of crazy

(37:25):
measures to like, you know, to to you know, to
to to survive. But it's kind of weird, uh okay,
And and then we get to see the causeway and
they walk across the causeway and it's got these little
like relief gates that also kind of look like Torai gates,
which are the gates that are both that you have
to pass through to walk into uh Japanese Shinto shrines,

(37:48):
and uh, it's it's it's great, Like this island is
the island of Lindis Farnan. This is like a liminal space,
like it exists like frozen and in like two thousand
and two or something like that, while like the main
island is just God only knows what's happening there. And

(38:12):
so so they go across and it's gonna be like
this big fun thing, you know, like they Aaron Taylor
Johnson is not worried about it at all. He's calm,
he's cool, he's collected, like he's you know, he's telling
a Spike about like, you got to look out for
these zombies. You gotta look out you know, this, this, this, this, this,
And they come upon one and it's a guy who's
like bloated, like you know, yeah, just really like looks

(38:38):
like he's you know, bloated from like gas or whatever.
But it's like it's like crawling along the ground and
Spike's able to hit it in the neck first try
and kill it. But then a couple more of them
attack and they're able to get away, and it's you know,
but they make some noise and then then things get

(39:04):
you know, let's say worse. Let's say uh, let's say worse.
They uh so we hear this like crazy like loud, roaring,
screeching thing and and uh Aaron Taylor Johnson's like a

(39:25):
oh no, in Alpha, we gotta go. And so they
like head back and but on the way back they
stop at this building this like dilapidated home to like
check for supplies, and they find a couple of things
that could work, and that's all good. But while they're
in there, a bunch of the zombies come in and

(39:45):
they get chased up into the attic and they have
to stay there because the while the rest of the zombie.
While the rest of the zombies are like, boo, I'm
gonna go look for food elsewhere, and they're like sucking
worms out of the ground or whatever, the alpha zombie
they just see him staring out there in the distance,
and he's smart enough to know that you've got to
come out at sometimes. So this is like an evolution

(40:07):
of of them. It is. It can plan, it can plan,
you know.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Hold excuse me, so uh it uh It cuts back
to to the island, and you know, we see the
stuff we were talking about with like the signs about
you know, like we got to go on but you know,
uh die, we might but we gotta go on regardless.

(40:40):
And here's the picture of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria. You know,
here's the British flag, you know, here's the English flag,
all the stuff, and and they're singing because it was
so famous from the first movie. Uh, they're seeing you
know a but with me first. Yeah, anyway, it's a

(41:03):
great song. One of most secret shames is that I
still appreciate some church music even though I stopped going.
But it's a it's a beautiful song. And you know,
you have these kids singing it in like a choir practice,
and the boys are out practicing their bow and arrow.
So I mean they're very much reinforcing you know, just uh,
gender norms as they you know, patriarchal gender norms. And

(41:28):
then it comes back and in this house they find
this guy who's tied up, who's succumbed to the virus,
and on his back the word Jimmy is carved like
it like it's it's carved in his back down his spote.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
It's deeply settling.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
Yeah, and the guy, uh, like Spike has trouble killing
it because he's freaked out because you know, he's like, uh,
because people could have done that. They could have like
tied this guy up there and left him to get
caught by the zombies or whatever. And and Spikes streaked
out and so it screams and it attracts more zombies,

(42:06):
and uh, they shoot it but you know, they have
to stay in the house, and uh, that would be fine,
except sometime during the middle of the night, a herd
of deer I think is deer. They just run by
the house, and because the house is old and it's
you know, been falling apart for three decades, this the

(42:30):
chimney on it collapses and that starts to bring the
whole thing down. So they have to flee into the
into the unknown, away from away from the Alpha, if
they if they possibly can. Yeah, So there's there's this
really like tense thing where they're like they're running back
and the and and the the water is is ankle

(42:53):
deep for shin deep, so they can cross it, but
like it's it's difficult. And you see this Alpha running
and like in the silhouette, like he's running against the
silhouette of the moon, and you see his fucking dick
and you're just like, what the.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Fuck I mean, I really linger on that dick.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, yeah, they yeah, they they wanted to see it.
They wanted you to know about it, and like it's
this really intense chase where like this like he's like
six five six six, like huge, like extremely muscular guy
with long like curly ish of black hair and a

(43:35):
frizzy beard, is just like chasing them, ah, you know, screaming,
and they eventually right, hey, they they raised the human cry.
The human cry is right.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
I did like that.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, yeah, they raised the human cry. And the thing
about the office is they can take like a bunch
of arrows to to get taken down, whereas most of
the zombies only take one, either to the heart or
the brain. But they've got a ballista that they hit.
They hit him in the chest with and knock him down.

(44:08):
But I mean, he's not dead. He just took a bullet.
Don't worry. He's okay. He just took a ballista bolt
to the fucking chest and and scampers off and they
make it back. Yay. No, everybody's great. This is this
is amazing.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
I like the fiery ballistic to the Oh that was
so cool. Yeah, it was so cool. I was like,
hell yeah, I was like, this is to me a cinema,
you know.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah, And they, oh, sorry, there there's one other important
thing right here. So in the distance, they see this
huge fire while they're while they're still in the house,
and uh uh, Spike's like, what is that is that
like another village of people. And he's like and and

(44:54):
Dad's like, no, no, no, it's fine, Like he's he
he tries to play it cool, but like you could
tell like he kind of knows something or something like that.
And so Spike's like, Okay, well that's weird and uh
and the dad says, like it's not another group. It's
not another group of people or anything like that, you know,

(45:15):
it's it's probably just a lone weirdo or something. So
they they get back, and uh, like the night they
get back, it's like a huge they there's like a
huge party. Of course, they have a huge party and
they pass Spike around on like a chair and everybody
gets really drunk, and Spike is uncomfortable because he thinks

(45:39):
his dad is you know, glazing glazing his accomplishments too much,
even though he did he did kill a couple of
them straight up and and and helped kill a couple
more while they were yeah yeah, yeah, but but Spike's
uncomfortable with it. And uh, he sees his dad kind
of stumble out of there, and he follows him, and

(46:01):
he sees his dad in the alleyway going down on
a woman who's not his mom, and so Spike kind
of stumbles home, you know, he doesn't say anything, but
he's like freaking out about that, and he sees like
maybe his granddad or something, an older man who helps
them and kind of lives with him and looks after

(46:23):
the mom while they're gone, and he tells and they
talk about it, and you know, he's like, well, you know,
your dad's just like he's just talking up because he's
so proud of you and you're a hero to him.
And you're like, oh, yeah, that is really sweet. Actually
that's kind of a nice way to think about it.
And uh, and then he goes, well, but we also

(46:47):
saw this fire and the old man whose name is Sam.
He's like, oh, that's probably doctor Kelson. And he's like
that's a doctor and you know, well, can he take
mom to him? And he's like, Nah, you don't want
to go near that guy. Like he's a weird creep.
You don't want to.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Be We're gonna detail, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
Yeah, and it's it's spoken about like this guy is
like a fucking child butcher, like he like lures living
humans in and and like like he like it's spoken
of like he like he he's like just like he's
spoken of, like he's fucking Jeffrey Epstein. Like it's like
in like, oh my god, that dude. Don't you don't
go anywhere near that dude, don't you know? Hell no?

(47:31):
And and so like you're prepped to be like, Okay,
what the fuck is this guy? Like what is this
guy doing? That? Like is so bad? And uh uh
you know Sam, so so Sam starts starting this over
in his head and he's like, I'm sorry. Spike turns
turns this over his head and Sam won't tell him anymore.

(47:53):
He's like, look, just talk to your dad about doctor Kelson.
He'll tell you what happened. You know, it's you know,
it's not from your dad. Yeah, yeah, you know, cool whatever,
So uh what am I trying to say? Okay, So

(48:13):
the next morning, like uh uh, Aaron Taylor Johnson stumbles home.
He's drunk as shit or he's hung over. He should
excuse me, and he goes down to make some food
for everyone, and then Spike comes down and uh and
ask him about doctor Kelson and and uh Aaron Taylor

(48:35):
Johnson tells a story about how when he was a
kid or younger, they went over there and they saw
him and he was just like he had all of
these dead people lined up into rows and god only
knows what he was doing to them and like throwing
them in these like huge in this huge oven and
like you know, he waved us to come down and

(48:57):
smiled like he was like this crazy. So you're like
you're like, holy fuck, what does this guy do? Like
you know, he's like and he's even a doctor, Like
are they calling him like are they calling him doctor?
Like a mad scientist or not? Like what you know,
what is this guy's thing? But uh, Spike's like, well
can he fix mom? And like no, which I mean,

(49:21):
you know, Spike has a point like that guy's a
doctor who cares, Like let's just go go over there
and like drag him under gunpoint, under under arrow point,
like yeah, Like and they say they haven't had a

(49:41):
doctor on the island and like they ply it seems
like it's been like at least a decade, so like
they don't have a doctor, like they're seriously missing some things.
And Spike's like hello, but this also like again, why
didn't anyone say anything, like they're thirty forty p in
this town? Who are old enough to have lived a

(50:02):
long time before the virus happened and could easily be like, yeah,
it's real bad. It looks like your mom has cancer,
like you know, but no one says it. It's just like, yep,
something's wrong with her. It's like if you tell him
it's cancer, and it's something that's basically it's it's almost
inoperable in a lot of cases nowadays, you know, they
definitely can't do it there, So sorry, kid, you know,

(50:24):
just make peace about your mom. And Spikes are pissed
off because they're like not gonna go get this guy.
And he's like, so do you want mom to die?
When she dies, you're gonna be with that other woman,
and Aaron Taylor Johnson just slaps the fucking slaps the
shit out of him and uh, which is not great.
Oh yeah, that's bad, And like he tries to go

(50:46):
apologize and the kid pulls this like pocket knife on
him and it's so.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Sad because he's it's about knife crime.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
No, it is so sad because he pulls it out
and the dad like looks at him like come on, man,
and like and literally just like pinches his hand barely
and pulls the knife out of his hand and folds
it up and then gives it back to the kid.
Like he's not gonna hurt. He's not going to like,
you know, stab him or anything. But he's like get
out of here, you know. And like so Aaron Taylor

(51:15):
Johnson leaves. But Spike, Spike now has this idea in
his head and he is going to take his mom
to this doctor. That's what he's gonna do. And but
the problem is, you know, like how how do you
get out? Because like if you try to take the
mom out like out the front gate, people are going
to stop you because she's not well enough to try,

(51:38):
Like she's clearly in those state to travel. Like her
episodes good, Like they just keep happening and happening. And
uh so he like sets the shack like this out
of something. He sets like a small shack on fire.
And because they don't have any piping or hoses or

(52:01):
I don't anything, they have to to drag out the
water buckets to do this, like it's a real medieval fire.
And uh yeah, they're able to sneak across the causeway
when that happens, and in a very I think interesting
uh choice. We don't go back to the island until
the very till Linda's farn until the very end of

(52:22):
the movie. So the rest of this movie is just Spike,
his mom and whatever they find. And they get across
and uh, they start heading towards They start heading towards
towards where Spiker members seeing the fire, and we cut

(52:42):
we cut over and we see like these fire. They
see like these six or seven guys who are in
like tac gear and they're like running like sprinting away
from like a zombie horde, and and they're they're running
off and most of them get captured, but one of them, uh,
one of them is able to get away. And then

(53:04):
it cuts and we see this one. We see like
a bunch of zombies like shuffling through a river. But
one of them is pregnant, and so you're like, okay,
like maybe she got turned, like she was pregnant before
she got turned, you know, so it is a very
recent thing. Or or maybe they can maybe they can
still get pregnant somehow, maybe the alpha is impregnated or
who knows.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
Yeah, I was confused by that, but you know, sure
I was too.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
There was a part where like the alpha keeps going
after the baby.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, and I was like, so does the alpha want
is that?

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Like, yeah, that's kind of what I was like.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Does the alpha identify the baby as his?

Speaker 3 (53:42):
Yeah? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Basically, the mom keeps having episodes.
They get chased, they're able to get away, but they
have to spend the night in uh. Oh fuck, I
wrote it down, but I don't remember where. They spend

(54:03):
the night in in some some reduced ruin of an abbey,
and uh, a zombie like creeps up on them and
almost gets Spike, but he's saved by a mysterious force
and you don't know what it is. But then when
they wake up in the morning, you see a brief
flashback and his mom just had an episode where she

(54:25):
like killed the zombie and either doesn't remember it or
things to dream or something.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Yeah, yeah it was I thought that was sick.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Yeah, yeah, that was. Yeah. She just she gets like
a rock or like something from the from the the
Crumbling Foundation. It just brains a fucking thing. And then
they chased by some more and the surviving tackops guy
saves them by uh shooting a gun into a room

(54:59):
filled with is gas filled with gas fumes that have
been leaking in for decades.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
About one point before we get there. So yeah, there's
the the heartwarming scene in the field of rape seed,
like where she sees the Angel of the North and
she's like, look, it's the Angel of the North and
she confuses Spike with her dad. I want to point
out how impossible it is to get all the way
from Linda's farn to fucking Gateshead.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
That is a sixty two mile trip.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
I looked at up. I'm just like, I'm like, I'm
like Southerner alert.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
I'm like, fucking come on, mate, like this is I'm
sorry they are not seeing the Angel of the North.
It would take most it would take two days to
get there under optimal conditions. Absolutely not just like English
like I mean like real deep England head.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Now. I thought it was a nice point. I liked it.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
I'm always excited when I see the Angel of the North,
et cetera. But like, let's fucking calm down. We're not
in a car you can't get from when it's fund
of the Angel the North.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Anyway, Yeah, there's also that the tree that was cut down,
the sycamore between the two hills. It makes an appearance
here ripped to one of the rats. Ever, so like
they make it through and it turns out the guy

(56:27):
who saved them as like this like Nato soldier. He's Swedish,
his name's Rich and he like, from what we could tell,
the world has basically gone on as normal for most things.
Like he has a cell phone that's dying. He has

(56:47):
a girlfriend or an ex girlfriend who had like a
really bad like some really bad plastic surgery and her
face looks all puffed up, and the kid makes jokes
about it and he gets on and the soldier gets
all mad. He's just a real big dick. Like the
soldier like he is a I mean, like he is
a hero in the fact that he saves them, uh

(57:09):
once or twice, but he's also just a huge asshole
and he's look. At one point, he's like, I'm a Viking,
and I was like, oh, that's cute. They had another
Viking invasion. I know.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
It's like I liked that. I really liked it.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
I was like, I'm a Viking and it's like, yeah,
what happened to them, homeboy?

Speaker 3 (57:28):
I mean, the same thing that happens the same thing
that's happening to you here. Ye. So like there's like
this confusion because for him, because the mom keeps calling
him dad, and he's like, why you know, I knew
you guys would fall to incests, but like this seems
a little odd. And he's like, and Spike's like, she

(57:53):
has these issues. You know, I'm going to see a doctor.
We got to figure out what's wrong with her. And
so they they do this and they're they're kind of
making it like they're they're getting on each other's they're
all getting on each other's nerves. But whatever, you know,
ragtag team, et cetera, et cetera, and hm, they find
this bus and inside they hear all of this screaming

(58:18):
and it's like, Okay, what the fuck is happening? And
they go in and the pregnant infected is.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
It's a train.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
A train, I'm sorry, train respective Americans are like some
kind of bus.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
It was stuck somewhere.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
It's like, it's that's kind of like one of our
the that setup is one of our more standard kind
of commuter class trains, if that makes sense. So it's
like it's less like a long distance train, it's more
like the one you'd get to work in the morning,
but between towns.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
Yeah. So they're on it and she's screamed, I mean,
and the mom just goes up and takes the zombies
hands m hm and just holds them, you know, gives
her something to hold on to while she's giving birth.

(59:18):
And she gives birth to a baby. But it's healthy.
That's just a regular, a regular baby. So like life
has literally found a way here, possibly from like this
Alpha just fucking this woman, like I don't know, but
like it's a healthy like you know, it's a healthy

(59:44):
and I mean, like there are other people like they're
in the second movie there was like an asymptomatic carrier
and they were hoping to like get a a cure anyway,
So like, uh, the NATO guy freaks out because he
wants to kill the baby because it's a zombie and

(01:00:07):
he's like, all of you guys are you know, freaks,
And then he gets picked up and killed by the
Alpha and has his head and upper spinal column ripped
out Allah the predator.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
And the unfortunately that fucks.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Yeah, And it's a crazy The head is a crazy
prosthetic too. It's it is such a good job on it,
and he does that and he starts chasing Spike and
the mom and the newborn baby and it they they

(01:00:49):
run and they're scared and they they make it towards
where they're supposed to be, to where they can find
doctor Kelson and comes up and doctor Kelson saves them,
but because the alpha who doctor Kelson is named Samson,
is going to attack them. But he gets hit with
a blow dart and it's a mixture of like fuck,

(01:01:14):
what was it?

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Morphine and xylazine dart and like this guy hits it
and you're like, wait, this guy is a real doctor.
The motherfucker got morphine and he's got access to like
morphine and xyla and wait, so he's got access to
like actual medicine of some kind and you're like, huh okay,

(01:01:39):
so like and it's ray fine and he's covered in
iodine and why is he covered in iodine? Because the
virus doesn't like iodine. Like he like he's about it. Yeah,
he's learned a lot about it. He's been alone. It
seems he's been alone for at least like thirteen years.
He hasn't seen like another human or at least, you know,

(01:02:02):
I wasn't able to contact any of them. And he
takes the head from Samson, and Samson is just like
he's not dead, he's just drugged and knocked out.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
And I personally would try to find a way to
kill Samson while he was drugged and knocked out, but.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Seems to treat he, he seems to treat it more
like uh, like like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
A natural feature, like their wildlife.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Yeah, like you yeah, he's not gonna kill it unless
he absolutely has, you know. It's just you know, it's
like he looks like you're you're not supposed to go
and kill a lion just you know, just because it's
big and scary, you know, or whatever. It's part of
the the ecological niche of this island at this point.
And then Kelson takes him back to his spot and

(01:03:00):
you see these towers and you're like, what the fuck
is this? What is this? And you see it from
from the air and you're like, you know, are these
what are these columns made out of? And it zooms
in and they're made out of bones, all bones all
like uh, you know, they've had all the skin and

(01:03:22):
sind you and everything burned off of them and it's
all gone, and they're there and they're tied and these
like nice arrangements and everything, and there's you've got shin bones,
arm bones, fingers, everything like that, and then like cos yeah, yeah,

(01:03:45):
columns and then in the center there is a huge
mound of skulls. But this is not the timurid mound
of skulls where you're like over your defeated enemies or
you know, Gingahn or whoever. This is, like, as Kelson explains,
this is a memento mori. This is you have to

(01:04:09):
remember that you're going to die no matter what, no
matter how much money you have or don't have or
anything like that, you're going to die. And also he,
you know, Spike is like, god damn, you're right, dude,
this sucks. And he's like, but also you must love
memento amorris, you know. And so he teaches Spike this stuff,

(01:04:29):
and like he's clearly an intelligent, erudite person. He treats like,
he treats these bodies very well. These are dead people.
He did not kill any of these people himself, that
I mean that we can tell like he didn't. He
wasn't like piling up bodies so he could kill everyone.

(01:04:51):
He was taking bodies that he found bringing them back here,
and he started making this thing. And now, I mean,
you could say that this is the you know where
kings of a guy who's having a lot of issues
and going through a lot of stuff, and that is true,
but at the same time, it's opposed apocalypse. I don't
know what like this is like you know, and I mean,

(01:05:12):
like the thing is gorgeous. And he performs an exam
on Isla, and of course she has terminal brain cancer
that either spread from her lymph nodes into her brain
or brain one way that you have to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Say by all the time it's fantastasized.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
We can it's fantastasized. It is. She does not have
long She's in a lot of pain. This trip has
tired her out, and so without saying anything, Ila and
the doctor kind of agree that he's going to euthanize
her because it's just too much and she's going to

(01:05:52):
die horribly if he doesn't. And so they they use
use some of that some of the same stuff they
used on on Samson, they use it on Spike. So
he you know, he he won't like come after her
and try to fight, and the mom goes off and

(01:06:12):
Uh is euthanized. And it's very sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
It's very very moving.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
It's not there's like I thought it was really nicely done.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
I thought it was really nicely.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
Kelson is like he's a very nice guy. He's like
very like he's just helpful. And so this is now,
this is the part where I have to explain the
mind fucked this movie did to me. Actually, it's not
the movie's fault, it's just me. So because I have
a kid, I don't see a ton of movies when

(01:06:44):
they came when they come out, some of them I
will like try to go, but like it's very hard.
So like I've kind of gotten pretty good about like
hearing about movies and reading like some stuff about them,
but without like fully like I can, I can kind
of glaze over stuff to where I'm not fully uh
spoiled by things. But the one thing I knew about

(01:07:05):
this movie at the end, other than they found the
Bone Temple, because I had seen that and I thought
that was so cool, But there was this thing and
I saw people on mind say there's a Jimmy Seville
thing at the end, And so the.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Entire cal You're right not to know his name.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
He's a fucking creep and it's gross.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
We'll talk about Jimmy Saville in just a second, but
this entire Okay, Jimmy Saville is like terror is it
is a pedophile. He was known as a pedophile the
British leadership. Everyone knew about him being a pedophile. They
didn't care.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Nobody cared.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
He was also a decophiliac, just like a serial sexual predator, boys, girls,
dead people, you name it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
He did not care.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
There is a good biopic about it story Steve Coogan
as Jamie Sapple, And I recommend you check that out
if you are unfamiliar about how he is evil.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
But yeah, and so I was like, and I knew
Ray Fine was in it, So this entire movie, I
am primed for Ray Fine to be like a fucking
like head harassed who burns like the bodies of his
victims and huge pire and like I'm so ready like everything.

(01:08:27):
And when they get to him, I'm like, oh, I
know you got something up your sleeve, Ray Fine, don't
try that nice that kindly old man shit with me.
And like while he's performing this exam and he asked
the mom, like if he can like touch her lymph
node and then touch her breast on the side to check,
And I'm like, you're just copping a feel, You're just
copping a field. And then when they when he euthanizes

(01:08:48):
the mom, I was like, he tricked her. I know
he did. He's gonna molest Spike. Now I know what's
gonna happen. He's gonna eat that fucking baby. And none
of that happens because that because he's just a nice guy.
And Samson infiltrates the sanctuary, Spike hits him with a

(01:09:14):
dart and saves Kelson's life, and Kelson's like, look, you
can't stay here with me, like not by yourself, Like
you're cool, but you know we can't do that. You
have to go home. You have to you have to
go back to your family. You have to go back
to your island to live with them, because it doesn't like,

(01:09:37):
what are you going to do with me out here?
Like you know, I can teach you some stuff, but
it's not going to be the same. And so Spike's like, okay, fine,
I will go back to the main I will go
back to the island, and everything he has the baby
in like a shopping basket.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
Well, I love I thought that was a really nice yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Yeah, And he crosses the causeway and you're like, Okay,
he's finally gonna come home. He and his dad are
gonna talk this out. You know, everything's gonna be fine.
But no, he leaves the shopping basket on the wall
with a note and he turns around and he goes
back to the island to come to terms with his

(01:10:18):
mom's death and come to terms with, you know, seeing
his dad cheat and you know, all those feelings. And
he leaves the baby there and he's like, look, here's
the baby. I met doctor Kilson. He's nice, he's not crazy.
You know, this baby was born from an infected but

(01:10:38):
it's not infected. Mom, you know, had a serious disease
and passed away, you know kind of thing. And so
like you see you see dad and he's like beside
himself and he like runs out into like the rising tide,
but he can't chase spike because it's it's coming too fast,
and so they pull him back in. It's all very
sad and so and then you get a card. It's

(01:11:01):
just twenty eight days later and we see Spike and
he has caught a fish and he is grilling it
over a fire that he has made. You know, he's
he's a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and
he's able to take down a couple of zombies who
were running at him very fairly easily. But then he
sees just a bunch of them coming. He's like fuck,

(01:11:24):
and so he runs off.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:25):
Yeah, He's like, oh shit, I gotta go. And so
he runs and he finds he's in like a kind
of like a cavernous roadway with walt with huge walls
of rock on either side, and he keeps running and
low and behold there's been a rock slide or someone
blew it out intentionally, but a bunch of rocks blocked
the road. And so he's like, shit, I gotta make
my last stand. And so he puts his he puts

(01:11:48):
his thing, he puts his stuff down, and he draws
his arrows and he starts firing. But as he does,
in the very background, you start to hear like a
weird lead distorted version of the Teletubbies music flaring up again,
and then you see all of these multi colored tracksuit

(01:12:11):
wearing bleach blonde ninja power rangers. They run in and
with like an assortment of like whips and chains and
pipes and like convert stuff like old gardening equipment that's

(01:12:32):
been converted. Like they fucking annihilate these zombies. They just
beat the shit out of them, kill them all. And
you're like, Okay, that's odd but cool. And then you
get a look at the guy who's their leader, and
it is Jack O'Connell, who plays who is like the

(01:12:55):
lead vampire in the movie Centers, and he's here and
he is dressed in an all blue tracksuit, gold chains,
bleach like ultra bleach blonde hair, looks exactly like Jimmy

(01:13:16):
Savell exactly. And you look down and you see he
has an upside down cross that he's wearing around his neck.
And it's the uh, the cross uh that little Jimmy got.
So this is Jimmy from the very beginning of the thing,
and this twelve year old boy is he gets invited

(01:13:39):
to join the Jimmy Savile and the Jimmy Saville and
the Teletubby Ninjas here at the end. And when this
happened to me, I was fucking slack jawed. I was
like because I did not expect the Jimmy Savil thing

(01:14:00):
to be like here's a cause player of like that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
Well yeah, and I guess it was also really quite
interesting because I was like, it comes in so late
in the movie, like because I was like all in,
you know, and then it's like basically like roll credits,
like the Jimmy sammlnomjes are here and anyway, now it's
over and I'm like, oh no, Spike's been taken by
the pedophile clan, right, and then it's like roll credits,

(01:14:25):
and I was like, oh my god. But I think
it was a really interesting way to end. And I'm
assuming there's gonna be yeah, like what twenty eight months
after twenty eight days?

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Like what are we gonna call it?

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
Like this is this is supposed to be part of
a trilogy. This is part of a planned trilogy these okay,
right this movie twenty eight years later, The Bone Temple
is the sequel, and uh, they I believe there's they
might have already started filming on it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
But I think that this is yeah, like for me,
this also really like it just immediately kind of like
hit some buttons. So the things that I kind of
start thinking about as a result of this from being
a resident of this island, right is I'm kind of
like it's also sort of like bringing out one of
the other horrors of living here.

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
So it's like if we are looking at the Linda's
Farm community as kind of being representative of like a
toxic historical nostalgia, like the kind of isolationism that is
that like Brexit, for example, is a symptom of that
kind of like a knee jerk British reaction to do things.

(01:15:40):
I think the Jimmy Savile thing Like what we're going
to be looking at there is kind of a reflection
on how our our institutions in particular kind of like
our media institutions perpetuate horrors. And I suppose that's what
like we're teeing up for the next thing, right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is toxic nostalgia, but toxic nostalgia
as like cult of personality for yeah, yeah, one of
the worst people to ever live.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Just so Jesus Christ like a real like he is
in hell. Uh and he was a staunch Catholic, So
I can't emphasize how much he is in hell right
now by his own reckoning.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
So you know, yeah, and so like but to me,
like I the whole time, I've been like, where's the
Jimmy savell, where's the Jimmy thing? Where is like what
was going on?

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
And watching the same thing, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
Because I was because I didn't hear of any more
actors being in this than the ones we had already seen,
and I was like, what is this thing? And then
he shows up and I'm like, you have got to
be fucking kidding the most it's there's no subtext to it,
there's no nothing. Britain is now run by by pedophiles,

(01:17:05):
like the cult of Jimmy, like whatever it is. They
run the place now, Like Ray Fines is there and
he seems to have like they've stayed away from him
for a while or whatever, but you know, the Jimmy
cult runs this place because earlier, while they're like te

(01:17:26):
trapesing across the beautiful countryside, there's like Jimmy is like
scrawled like on the back of a barn or something
like that, in huge letters, and I just like the
like this entire thing, entire thing is like just this huge, huge,

(01:17:47):
huge indictment of like British naval gazing, narcissism, about like
we used to be great and now we're not, you know,
like the way that like high school quarterbacks talk about
it like.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
I was great and in junior year, Oh I could
have been.

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
Yeah I could have been. But then he's not content
with that. He also has to remind you that, in
addition to all of that toxic nostalgia, the media apparatus
and the people who are in charge just let this
shit go on unabated, completely knowing about it. Not only

(01:18:25):
savile but uh, Prince Andrew all of the like higher
level people like that who are involved with the Ebstein stuff.
Like it's just this whole thing, and you're like, god, damn,
Danny Boyle, I wish I hated England as much as
you do.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
You know, like it's like how, you know, like only
Americans can truly hate America, you know in the way
that we do, you know, like we do we do
it in this like very specific way.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
I mean, actually I was take it back.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
A lot of people worldwide hate America, but you know,
but we have like these specific things.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
The special self loathing aspect.

Speaker 2 (01:18:59):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
But yeah, so and I am am interested to see
the next movie.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
Yeah, yeah, I am.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
I am, Yeah, I really like this. It was really good.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
I really liked it. Really, I really enjoyed it. You know,
like I think that we can all agree that twenty
eight days later is like a you know, a masterpiece actually,
like the genre completely made everyone rethink what you could
do with zombies and also had this like particular britishness

(01:19:34):
to it that was horrifying. Twenty eight weeks later that
one joke about pubs great, we.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Like it yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Fine, like absolutely garbage. This is a return to form
a truly tense I found it really absorbing, Like I
was like, oh yeah, Like I was all in yeah
on watching it. And I like the historical stuff. I
think the medieval ca were great, and I think that

(01:20:01):
it is a very good piece of cinema, and indeed,
I think it functions as a really good critique of
British society.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
Also there's a lot of dogs.

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
Yeah uh yeah, it's yeah. I expected like to be
eye rolling at the medieval type aspects of it, but no,
it was. It was great, And I mean it's just this.
I think Boyle does a good job of a lot

(01:20:34):
of people, Like for a lot of writers and people,
zombies are just an excuse to like show you just
like destroying killing thousands of people, like and be like, oh,
but they're undead, so it doesn't matter. But you could
just kind of revel in that. But Boyle does a
good job of being like, look, they are a problem.

(01:20:56):
That is true, But have you considered that that human
beings are fun fucking awful? Like, have you considered like
the real demon in this movie is not Samson. Samson
is like responding to like, you know, a virus that's
taken away his brain, the real bad guys, fucking Jimmy.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, And it's like that this ship is
like fucked up, and so we were only just kind
of like receiving yeah this right now. I mean I
guess like the real the real trouble is like coming
to terms with mortality and like you know, intergenerational trauma
in that way, and you know how we respond to

(01:21:35):
horrors like that, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
So yeah, I think it really affect a piece of art.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
I really liked it. Yep, Yeah, well yeah that, Uh,
I think that's gonna do it for us today. I just, man,
what a mind fuck? The end of this movie was.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
It really was like you thought you were getting somewhere,
and then I.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
Thought I was ready. I was like, ray, fine, you
son of a bitch, and then he was like, no,
I'm cool, I'm here. I'm like, I'm actually a nice guy.
And then you're like, wait a minute. There's a doctor
who knows enough to to say this woman has uh
metastatic cancer and he's right there, and you guys haven't

(01:22:14):
had a doctor for a decade. What are you fucking doing?
Just bring him over, let him go make his bone
temple in his off time, Like what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
And also yeah, it's like you know, if someone just
gives you a friendly wave when they're doing something you
don't understand, baby, go talk to them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Yeah it's yeah. Anyway, folks, thank you for listening. Great job.
Just a great movie about Alex Garland. I didn't know
you still had it in you after Civil War, which
was a so good dog shit movie. But yeah, this

(01:22:50):
is great. Eleanor. What's going on with you? What's what's
going on? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
A few things?

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
So if you have scripts, my new Joan of Arc
film is out, so you know, go watch that and
then be like, at any time, Eleanor isn't on a
history hit everyone should be asking where is eleanor you know,
things like that. That's my suggestion if you haven't listened
to the trash feature app I did about Peter Thiel

(01:23:18):
and his ideas of Antichrist that is out and also
a friend of the show, professor Matt Gabriel, one of
the authors of The Dark Ages, has a new podcast
out which is called American Medievalist, and I was the
first guest on that, so you can hear me talking
about what my fucking problem is and like the experience
of being an American Medievalist over there, not that you

(01:23:40):
don't ordinarily get to hear that here, but yeah, and
then otherwise you know, I'm on the Socials Act Going
Medieval and doctor eleanor Yanica on Insta.

Speaker 3 (01:23:51):
Yep, you can find me Lucas Amazing on social and
you can find my al show, People's History of the
Old Republic if you want to hear me talk about
Star Wars. Anyway, thank you all for listening and we'll
see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
Bye.