If you’re keen for more of what Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are putting down, give this lot a spin.
28 Years Later might be the most surprising sequel of the year. Rather than a by-the-book follow-up to 2002’s 28 Days Later, it takes the zombie-adjacent apocalyptic series into weird new territory, positing a pseudo-medieval survivor society and draping the proceedings in all manner of mythic set-dressing and and themes. You can ready my full review here if you like, but the tl;dr is: it rules hard.
But if you’ve already seen it: a) well done, you, and b) you may be hankering for more in a similar vein. That’s a big ask; 28 Years Later draws from a deep well of influences, and there’s not too much out there that’s precisely like it. But if you’re chasing that vibe, you could do worse than give any of these a watch.
Robin of Sherwood (1984)
Catweazle creator Richard Carpenter brings us this TV riff on the Robin Hood legend, taking time to steep it in pagan lore and imagery.
Our hero, Robin of Loxley (Michael Praed) isn’t just an outlaw hero fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham and sundry Norman villains, he’s a servant of Herne the Hunter, a pagan forest spirit and analogue of the Celtic Horned God. This reframes the action as a spiritual battle for the soul of England rather than your more standard issue swashbuckling and derring-do. Worth it for the Clannad soundtrack alone.
On the cinematic side, John Boorman’s 1981 Arthurian epic Excalibur takes a similarly mystical approach to British legend.
The Wicker Man (1973)
I don’t want to preach to the choir here, but if we’re gonna talk folk horror we have to mention The Wicker Man, the towering achievement against which all other examples of the subgenre are measured.
Edward Woodward is virginal Christian cop Neil Howie, dispatched to an island off the Scottish coast to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. There he finds a pagan remnant society led by the saturnine Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee in one of his greatest roles), a deeper and more terrifying mystery than he ever imagined, and… well, it’s all in the title. Often imitated, once poorly remade, never bettered.
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
Just to assure you that 28 Years Later isn’t the only apocalyptic British zombie movie with a child protagonist – there’s at least one more.
Adapted by Lucifer and Hellblazer author Mike Carey from his own novel (well, sort of – like 2001, they were written concurrently) and directed by Colm McCarthy (2010’s Outcast – track that down) the film drops us into a UK overrun with fungus-infected zombies, ala The Last Of Us. At a military installation, Glenn Close’s stern scientist is experimenting on kids – infected, flesh-eating kids, mind you, but ones that have retained their intelligence. Teacher Gemma Arterton takes a more compassionate view of her charges, but it’s all rather moot as a a disaster sees them marching off to London under the protection of Paddy Considine’s squaddie and with the infected but well-muzzled Melania (Sennia Nanua) in tow. She’s the titular Girl, and she may hold the key to humanity’s future – or not, as the case may be.
This is a somber, mean little thriller, but seems to have flown under the radar a bit, which is a shame; it’s a smart, impressive addition to the zombie canon.
Black Death (2010)
You’ve seen Sean Bean die a lot by this stage of the game, but you’ve never seen him die quite the way he does in Christopher Smith’s grim little medieval folk horror. That’s hardly a spoiler; he is, after all, Sean Bean. I’m half convinced the death scene is the reason he signed on.
Here, he’s Ulric, a knight who forces the novice monk Osmund (a cusp-of-fame Eddie Redmayne) to lead him and his men to an isolated village reported to be untouched by the plague currently ravaging the country. They’re keen to investigate whether a necromancer might be responsible, as you do, and if so deliver the malefactor up to the local Bishop (a quick cameo from genre legend David Warner) for torture and execution.
But you don’t need to add the supernatural to make the dark ages dark, and Smith piles on the dirt, dung, torture, and violence. It’s grim stuff. Obviously, Black Death takes a few cues from The Wicker Man, but it comes across as like a heavy metal cover of the dark folk original. If that sounds like your jam, don’t spare the horses.
Threads (1984)
28 Years Later opens with a scene of children watching TV – Teletubbies, to be exact. There’s a similar scene in Threads, which shows the first generation of children born after a nuclear war gathered before a black and white TV, barely comprehending the educational program on the screen. It’s not even in the top 10 bleakest moments to be found here.
The most notorious TV movie ever made, and a strong contender for the most depressing film of all time, Threads has director Mick Jackson and screenwriter Barry Hines take us step by step through what happens to the English city of Sheffield after a US-Russia proxy war (in… uh… Iran, as it happens) starts splittin’ atoms.
There are no supernatural elements, no concessions to heroism or drama, no softening of the blow. Made for pocket change over a 17 day shooting schedule, and armed with the best research available at the time, Threads just maps out the probable future history of Armageddon.
They showed us this in primary school, by the way.
Fido (2007)
And now for something a little lighter. Much like 28 Years Later, Fido posits a kind of society surviving a zombie apocalypse. Unlike Later‘s medieval aesthetic, Fido shares more in common with Fallout, presenting us with a picture-perfect suburban ’50s utopia surrounded by wasteland infested with flesh-eating ghouls.
The wrinkle here is that zombies can be fitted with control collars, rendering them harmless and obedient. When the Robinsons (Dylan Baker and Carrie-Anne Moss) get one to help around the house, their son Timmy (K’Sun Ray) decides the mute, lumbering brute is his new best friend, and names him Fido (good lord, it’s Billy Connolly).
Essentially Lassie with a zombie instead of a supernaturally intelligent Border Collie, Fido is far more comedy than horror, but it’s a pretty singular vision – a pastel-perfect suburbia built on the backs of the undead.
Braindead, aka Dead Alive (1992)
Before he dedicated his career to making documentaries about World War I and The Beatles, Shoeless Pete Jackson used to make gnarly little horror comedies designed to offend sensibilities and censors in equal measure (he also made a few fantasy adventure flicks for a minute there). Braindead makes the list because I decided we needed a zombie baby, and it was either this or Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.
How the terrifying tot comes about here takes far too long to explain, but Jackson’s gleefully gory romp gives us a zombie outbreak in 1950s New Zealand, the infection caused by a grotesque “Sumatran Rat Monkey” brought back from an anthropological expedition. As the undead horde grows, it falls upon meek mama’s boy Lionel (Tim Balme) to save both the day and his love interest, Paquita (Diana Peñalver) – which he does by strapping a running lawn mower to his chest and charging into the fray. Makes Helm’s Deep look pretty mid.
Dragonslayer (1981)
One of the cool things about 28 Years Later is the way it shows its characters have, if not a medieval mindset, but a worldview that is definitely drifting into the pre-modern. That’s hard to do; we tend to project our own mores and ethics onto fictional characters regardless of the context they find themselves in.
Dragonslayer, a weird artefact from Disney‘s Dark Age, when the House of the Mouse was flinging out child-traumatising fare like Something Wicked This Way Comes and Return to Oz, manages a similar trick. Directed by Matthew Robbins (he wrote Sugarland Express, Steven Spielberg’s first theatrical film), Dragonslayer‘s title sums up the plot nicely. In the 6th century, a kingdom is being ravaged by the dragon Vermithrax Pejorative (great name, no notes). After his wizard master Ulrich of Cragganmore (Ralph Richardson) is killed, his apprentice Galen Brandwardyn (Peter MacNicol) must murder the monster – ideally before the locals feed it another virgin.
Shockingly dark for a Disney flick, Dragonslayer offers us a grim vision of the past: ignorant, cruel, vicious, and superstitious. It also gives us one of the greatest dragons ever seen on screen in the form of Vermithrax Pejorative. At least according to Guillermo de Toro, who called the stop motion creation. “…perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made.”
28 Years Later is in cinemas now.
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