Memento Mori - the zombie film in a time of genocide

Remember you will die

Danny Boyle’s 2002 apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later reignited the zombie genre for the 21st century. Unlike the slow and dimwitted zombies of earlier films, these ones were fast. They ran. Speculative fiction writer China Mieville described them as “post-Seattle zombies, anti-capitalist zombies”. Some three years before the film’s release, an estimated 40,000 people had taken part in protests outside the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle, Washington. In 28 Days, writes Mieville, “the zombies are no longer shambling around, they’re running in scenes of social disorder that can’t help but remind you of anti-capitalist demonstrations.”

WTO protests in Seattle, November 30, 1999. Photo by Steve Kaiser

The initial film was followed up with a sequel, 28 Weeks Later in 2007, but we’ve had to wait nearly two decades since for another entry in the franchise. 28 Years, as you’d expect, takes place 28 years after the ‘rage virus’ epidemic that led to the collapse of the United Kingdom. It’s a changed world. The story concerns a community of survivors who have fortified themselves on an island, accessible via causeway only at low tide. While the island’s residents make trips to the mainland for supplies, the British Isles themselves are cut off from Europe, patrolled by European boats to ensure no one attempts to reach the continent — a small detail that’s evocative of the European Union’s hostility toward asylum seekers. On the island, a new generation, including 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams), the film's protagonist, is growing up with no first hand experience of the old world. Perhaps that’s why this society is clinging to nostalgia: a Saint George's cross flag flies over the settlement despite the fact that England has ceased to exist as a political entity.

“It’s not a political film,” Boyle told the Sunday Times, “but when we started work on this, it came after Brexit and that retrenchment to older values, and you cannot help but think that this film is a response to that,” adding “The film is full of British actors, and our obsessions.”

Indeed, much has been written already about 28 Years Later’s Brexit allegory. Less has been said however about the films poignant commentary about remembrance and mass death- topical almost two years into the genocide in Gaza.