Director: Danny Boyle
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom/Canada/USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
Living in an isolated community, a group of survivors from the rage virus tries to make their way across onto the mainland to check on supplies for the community, but when they come across a doctor studying the remnants of the infected left alive, they come together to stop them.
Review:
On the whole, this was a troublesome if still watchable genre effort. Among the more likable factors present here is the wholly effective and enjoyable first half to this one, which manages to incorporate a solid sense of world-building alongside the more tense moments. The few bits we get about the lifestyle they lead on the island community, focusing on a mix of self-sustaining ingenuity and dystopian scraps left to work alongside the series of rules and regulations that govern their lives there, sets up the world rather nicely. Knowing the severity and extent of the virus being spread across the world to the point of crippling the community and keeping them isolated until the infected are dead, it ties into the previous films rather well and keeps everything moving along rather nicely with their training to defend against the infected with more primitive weaponry than expected.
On top of that, there’s also quite a lot to like about the infected here and the way they’re integrated into the story. With the savagery and ravenous nature still very much intact, with the way we’re treated to swarming scenes of the overwhelming numbers taking out the uninfected, not just in the flashbacks showing how society fell, but also the numerous scenes in the forest as the group makes their way to the mainland, this one gets quite a lot of mileage out of their appearance. The chases and encounters featured here have a solid, manic energy to them as well from the close-quarters camera-work that keeps up right next to everything, which helps to add nicely to the action of the creatures continuing to come after their target and the defensive tactics used to keep them back, resulting in some great gore as well to give this one some positive points.
There are some big problems here that hold it back. One of the biggest drawbacks is the immensely unsatisfying and jarring tempo that takes place, where it remains immensely difficult to care about what’s happening with the film’s characters. The first hour to this one introduces the zombie threat, the plight of the survivors stuck on the island off the mainland, and how they manage to deal with the intervening causes of infection running around, and the multitude of incidents involving trying to get to safety when they do encounter zombies which is savage, intense, and ferocious in how it’s all presented. After that, the film stops to focus on the coming-of-age saga of the kid and his encounters with the scientist struggling to understand the cause of the infection which just drags on forever involving a series of questionable interactions that might signal how little we are from the infected, but it’s all lost and just clumsily handled so it’s all a bit dull and meandering.
That is highlighted in the biggest error against this one, with the whole thing feeling like a part of a larger story than a self-contained whole. The real-world background of the film comes into play here with regards to it being exactly that, but it’s hard to get invested in what’s going on when so much of this is unexplained and ignored. The lifestyle of the survivors on the mainland, the nature of the doctors’ experiments on the infected, while the dead are all around them, and the general state of their evolution in general are barely hinted at and don’t do much to answer what’s going on as if it’s waiting around for the later installments in the story to complete the picture. That makes for an incredibly unsatisfactory singular viewing where far too much of this one is left with confusion than anything else, and with the dull pace as well, it’s not a great sign for this one, as all of these issues are what hold this down.
Overview: **/5
A disappointing and generally underwhelming entry in the series, this one manages to be part of a good film in the first half, but completely turns around all the goodwill with a disastrously dull and boring second half. Those who are franchise completists or hardcore fans of the style will have the most to get out of it, while everyone else should heed extreme caution with this one.
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