(may contain spoilers)
There is a strange symmetry between Danny Boyle’s new film, 28 Years Later, and Adam Curtis’s five-part series Shifty. Both were released in the latter part of 2025 and contain references to the notorious sex offender and paedophile Jimmy Savile. The first clip in Curtis’s series features Savile introducing a group of pre-teen children to Margaret Thatcher, while the final scene of Boyle’s film depicts a group of men wearing blond wigs and tracksuits, all referred to as ‘Jimmy’.
But there is also a deeper resonance with both, as both explore Britain’s obsession with nostalgia. Curtis’s series Shifty, much like his earlier works, is a pastiche of film clips, with occasional captions to guide the viewer through an account of life in Britain at the end of the twentieth century. The series explores the deep contradictions Britain faced as its wealth and power diminished in the aftermath of its decline as a global empire – the rise of individualism and the decline of solidarity, the waning of old formations and the emergence of new economic, media, and technological trends. It also charts the strange nostalgia that gripped and continues to grip Britain. In a significant scene, Keith Joseph, who was Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Industry, points out that the so-called ‘new’ monetarist economics originated from the nineteenth century. Shortly after, another clip features Patrick Cosgrave, an advisor to the Thatcher government, who explains that Thatcher invented a consensus of what Britain had been and could be, which was entirely ‘inspired by her childhood reading of Churchill’.
Similarly, Boyle’s 28 Years Later also explores nostalgia using the themes of society, infection, and national identity. The film reunites the directing and writing team from the original 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. It was shot using iPhones. Whereas previous films employing this technique, such as Unsane or Tangerine, utilised it to create an intimate or claustrophobic style, in contrast, this film achieves a stunning and expansive visual impression. Action scenes are often portrayed using skip-freeze-cut editing to generate a sense of energy and distortion. They are frequently intercut with scenes from Laurence Olivier’s Henry V to disrupt the flow of time and further emphasise the sense of nostalgia and of an England dreaming of a lost past.
The film centres around a small community of survivors living 28 years after the original ‘Rage’ virus has devastated Britain. They reside on a small island off the northeast coast, separated from the mainland by a tidal causeway. The village appears to have regressed to a 1950s version of Britain, featuring pictures of the Queen, national flags, and clearly defined roles for men and women. If the original 28 Days Later reflected the post-9/11 era, this sequel can be seen as a commentary on post-Brexit Britain. Now isolated and abandoned by the continent, with European patrols enforcing a quarantine by stopping any ‘small boats’ that might attempt to flee, Britain is depicted as a pestilential outpost that is decaying, isolated, and ravaged by infection, symbolising a nation grappling with what it has become.
The main narrative revolves around the coming-of-age story of 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), set in a horror environment. As critic Mark Kermode quipped, this is a blend of Cannibal Holocaust and Kes. The initial section of the story focuses on Spike’s dysfunctional family, which includes his father, Jamie (portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his mother, Isla (played by Jodie Comer). Spike is facing a rite of passage as he prepares to go to the mainland with Jamie to scavenge and make his first infected kill. Upon returning from the mainland, Spike discovers that his father has been lying and that the myths sustaining the island community, rooted in Britain’s past glories, are actually false.
The second half of the story then focuses on Spike’s second journey off the island with his sick mother to find the last remaining doctor, the mysterious Dr Kelson (played by Ralph Fiennes). This section of the film is saturated with religious imagery, including a ‘Zombie Virgin Mary’. Upon discovering Dr Kelson, they find him building a cathedral-sized memento mori constructed from skulls and bones. He has invented a potion based on morphine that can temporarily disable the rage-infected zombies, but he avoids killing them. This evokes themes of commemoration and coexistence – a metaphor for post-Brexit Britain, stuck between nostalgia and progress.
The final scenes of the film feature a group of men dressed as Jimmy Savile, paralleling the beginning of Curtis’s film Shifty, which starts with a clip of Savile alongside Margaret Thatcher. Both images serve to critique nostalgic nationalism and collective amnesia. In the film, Savile’s crimes would have remained hidden, whereas during the period depicted in Shifty, his crimes were known but covered up and forgotten.
As Britain stumbles forward, governments change, immediately disappoint, and nothing seems to improve. We need more allegories that reflect what we have become as a nation.
‘28 Years Later’ is currently on general release and will be available to stream at the end of this year.
‘Shifty’ is available on the BBC iPlayer
