The zombie film is the horror subgenre that refuses to die, lumbering out of the grave with its unquenchable appetite and slurring dialogue - an exquisite corpse that can always be redressed for current industry trends. Last year’s 28 Years Later [+lee también:
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The last film concluded with an alarming cliffhanger, where a cult called the Jimmys - whose leader, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), sports the crudely ornate attire of disgraced UK TV personality Jimmy Saville - abducts the young protagonist, Spike (Alfie Williams). Decked in sheer white hairpieces, jumpsuits, and inverted crucifixes, they’re a lairy gang of ersatz Satanists, equally if not more sinister than the “infected” humans marauding around England’s North East. Also introduced in the previous instalment, and more prominent here, is Dr. Ian Kelson (a game Ralph Fiennes), who’s already an iconic character in modern genre cinema. A proud NHS physician from the “before” period, he’s both a symbol of scientific rationality and undoubted psychological disintegration, emphasised by his hermit-like survivalism with his skin discoloured by protective iodine and cadaver blood, and the grotesque yet intuitive new spirituality he promotes, encapsulated by the phrase “memento mori”.

The saga is reminiscent of Romero’s Living Dead trilogy, which enjoys an unyielding influence on Garland and whose plot dynamics always pivoted on the human survivor characters and their loose grip on self-preservation. This is reflected in the innocent Spike who fled his family’s isolationist community on the island of Lindisfarne and who tries to protect himself within the relative sanctity of the Jimmys, finding an ally in Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), a free thinker who’s sceptical about Crystal’s anarchistic worldview and violent dogma, but who keeps the cult safe from the infected population nonetheless.

Subtler than in Garland’s recent feature Civil War [+lee también:
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28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, was co-produced by the UK and the US, courtesy of DNA Films, Decibel Films and Columbia Pictures.