Issue #87: Life and Death 🪦
28 Years Later + Sinners
Since today is not a special or notable day in way shape or form and there is absolutely nothing that we would ever be celebrating except the new episode of Poker Face, we’ve decided to send you some reviews! First Zosha dips back into the 28 d/w/y universe. Then Cate drops her 1,200 word long-gestating essay about Sinners. (sorry! it’s good though, promise. If you don’t agree, ok sure…)
Go forth and eat hot dogs for no particular reason whatsoever!
Zosha on 28 Years Later
While in many ways it might seem closer than ever, the idea of a true apocalypse is something my brain can’t comprehend. Loss is sudden, but its tendrils stretch too far to understand in mere hypothetical. I already can’t figure life years down the line, I don’t think a world-breaking phenomenon will change that.
It’s with this mindset I went in more or less neutral to 28 Years Later, a sequel to 28 Weeks Later, which is a sequel to 28 Days Later, a pair of zombie movies I think are strong but have no real connection to. In the new film, we follow Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old who’s part of a tidal island community able to move to mainland Britain during low tide. His father is eager to take him on his first pilgrimage to the mainland; his mother is suffering from an illness that leaves her restless and forgetful. Life here is full and fitful.
The moat-like defense of their island feels like Chekhov’s causeway. Immediately the way they live, fortify, and caution those crossing it that there will be no rescue missions all insist upon a total failure of safegaps. But 28 Years Later isn’t so interested in pure survivalism.
Where so many stories about zombies (and so many days spent in real life, even) feel like an endless interrogation of how do we not die, 28 Years Later makes full use of its title’s conceit. More than just a novelty to track the passing of time post outbreak, 28 Years Later presents a challenge: What does it mean to keep living? To keep deciding to fight for this bit of life we’re able to eke out?
A post-zombie apocalypse life has plenty of miseries; I’m sure many of us know someone who is happy to watch a zombie movie and announce that nothing looks worth all that. Certainly the 28 franchise is no stranger to that kind of nihilism. But 28 Years Later, across its two imperfect halves, pulls at the narrative thread of what keeps us here the way you catch a single strand of hair out of your head — that is to say: with singular, surprisingly precise pain points.
Danny Boyle is quick to bring us into the thought early, showing Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) sneaking his son a bacon; taking a deep, weary breath when he thinks he’s out of his son’s sightline before going upstairs to take care of his ailing wife.
Spike, of course, sees him anyway. But he’s not quite able to connect the lines between his dad taking that burden and taking some bit of fleeting, adulterous joy for himself. He’s only 12, and raised in this hellscape — how can he possibly know what it means to keep choosing to live? How can he comprehend what it means to die?
28 Years Later stalks this question strangely (complimentary), already a bit of a novelty to take on as earnestly in the zombie genre as it has. When Jamie and Spike head to the mainland they’re intercut with a recording of “Boots” by Rudyard Kipling and sprinkles of British soldiers throughout (Hollywood) history. It’s as if the film is dipping its finger in a pond and causing a ripple, drawing past and present together as a new installment in a long line, a future that can be defended through fortitude and will. Soldiers of fable and film meeting the new cruel reality that will define their bloodline.
Those men died in legacy, leaving behind them a legend that grew far beyond a mere loss. 28 Years Later seeks to do the same, providing Spike with a childish innocence on making life matter, first by hunting with his dad, and then by trying to help treat his mom Isla (Jodie Comer). You can read the masculine and feminine into the two halves of the lesson that Spike needs to get from his parents. It feels like an oversimplification to me; they both dip into “either” “mode” depending on what kind of protection the parental figure is stepping in to give in any given moment, and the movie is less halves than it is a slippery series of instructors for him.
When he finally finds Dr. Kelson (Ralph Finnes), a feared survivor who lives on the mainland and seems to ritualistically dispose of bodies, Kelson introduces his towers of skulls. Here the movie shifts into something more solemn and quiet: Dr. Kelson lives slathered in prayer. He seems to accept that death (and, with it, no one to remember him or the ideas of the place he built) could come any time, and yet he builds traps and covers himself in iodine in hopes of getting one more day.
28 Years Later makes this its sort of grand pronouncement, that to die is to live, and to live is to die. In Alex Garland’s script it’s a bit simple, but in Finnes’ careful, ever-thoughtful tranquility, it’s deeply felt. I am of two minds about the way Boyles toys around with new technology (I don’t think the iPhone quality adds much and it’s often jarring, but I deeply appreciate someone who’s willing to try). But I think his adventurous filmmaking sense is most successful when it adopts an almost omniscient third-person perspective for Spike depending on who he’s close to: An action hero on an epic quest; a coming-of-age story of parental love; a memorial; and, finally, an episode of Power Rangers. Each has their own way to survive, their own mode of cinema, their own value system to proselytize. There’s no wrong answers here. Just the opportunity to truly live.
Cate on Sinners
“You know something? Maybe once a week I wake up paralyzed, reliving that night. But before the sun went down, I think that was the best day of my life. Was it like that for you?”
“No doubt about it. Last time I seen my brother. Last time I seen the sun. Just for a few hours… we was free.
-Sinners (2025)
When director Ryan Coogler's epic, original science-fiction, musical, period piece was released to the public back in April, there was a lot of industry consternation about the (almost) unprecedented deal he brokered with WB. There had been a bidding war, and only they were willing to grant what other studios considered a risk: first dollar gross, final cut, and a return of copyright after 25 years.
But, if you've seen Sinners, (and paid attention) then it should be plainly obvious why Coogler would push for a deal like this on this specific film. In fact, not holding the line for this film would have been a betrayal of his work’s own politics.
Because in Sinners, ownership is freedom. Every creative choice in the film reinforces that point. It may not be much, but it’s ours.
Set in the 1930’s in the Mississippi delta, the Smoke Stack twins are back in town from Chicago, and they’re planning to open a juke joint. As they gather their resources and welcome their people, they’re greeted by an otherworldly force that covets what they have.
Smoke — played deftly by Michael B. Jordan, in easily the best work of his career — is the character most demonstrably searching for his freedom. His and his brother’s immediate goals are the same, but Smoke is looking much farther into the future.
Much of the community are sharecroppers, still working the same land owned by the same white men as they always have. To Smoke, it’s an indignity. And he knows they deserve more. This juke will be for them, and he and his brother will build something that’s theirs.
When the brothers purchase the mill from a white man they will later learn is the head of the KKK, Smoke reminds him that it is wholly theirs now. They won’t be paying him any more money, and if he shows up again, they’ll shoot him dead. Cathartic as the scene is, it also sets the agenda for the night. The transaction is done, and there is nothing left to tie him to his seller.
It’s why Smoke is so opposed to accepting the scrip that helps power the local economy. Sure, you can exchange it for goods and services. But it’s worthless outside the very plantations they cannot escape. It literally ties them to a site of violence and oppression, because that’s the only place where the little they have is worth anything. It’s a notable contrast to his ex-wife Annie, (Wunmi Mosaku) the community’s local conjure woman. Despite Smoke’s protestations, she has no issue taking the scrip. She’s not trying to escape the land. The land is hers, and she won’t be driven from it. Whether it be literally or spiritually, she owns it, and she’s staying put. She likes this freedom just fine.
Now, ownership can mean different things to different people. In Sinners there are two answers: property and music. Smoke wants to put down roots and build a life better than the one he left behind. But as far as we know, no one else in the community has a secret stash of guns and liquor stolen from Al Capone. So that leaves music. The blues is theirs. It’s as close as they have to magic, and they’ve got to keep it — make sure that it remains theirs.
Sinners invites you to try to get your arms around how much of it is deeply tied to everything else. You can’t extricate the prominence of Delta blues, from the majesty of that spectacular midpoint scene — or Remmick’s (Jack O’Connell) incredulous disavowal of the KKK from the symbolic meeting of the generations. They each enable each other.
So, naturally, the film’s music plays the biggest role in demonstrating the characters’ search for freedom, and the ways that Black cultural tradition has grown directly out of the pain we’ve been forced to endure. Music is the tool we use to access the escape we need to keep going. The Blues are called the blues for a reason.
An early scene with Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) demonstrates that deep connection beautifully. In the car with Stack and Sammy (Miles Caton), he tells a story about an old friend who was lynched. The sound design immerses us in the horror of that moment while Slim becomes visibly agitated. When the story is over, he rocks himself gently, trying to self-soothe. Soon a hum becomes a song — a deeply held trauma transmutes into rhythm. When pain is too big, it becomes music.
In many ways, that scene is the thesis of the film. All the themes of cultural appropriation, theft of black art, racist predation and — of course — freedom, are distilled into those few minutes: our music, our culture must be protected from interlopers because it’s how we survive this hell on earth. It’s how we find pockets of joy where there are none. It’s how we commune with our ancestors and progenitors — as in that much-lauded juke scene. It’s how we get free.
The Black diaspora has suffered so much. They’ve taken our histories, our families, our culture, our language and our lives. They don’t get to open the wound and take the salve too.
When our main villain Remmick descends upon the old mill in an attempt to get to Sammy, we start to understand why he won’t let up. As a vampire, he’s disconnected from his people. He’ll never crossover to meet his family, and he doesn’t have a griot to bring them here to him. He needs something only these Black people can give to him, and he’s perfectly happy to take it. The ostentatious rock opera that reverberates in the background when he enters the scene is a clever reminder of yet another musical genre that’s been snatched from the people who made it.
When Sammy plays his guitar and opens the veil to the next world, he invites everyone in the juke to step into a mythic space between here and hereafter. It’s exactly what Remmick needs from him. White vampires preying on Black people’s music is not a subtle metaphor, but it’s an effective one. Without Sammy, our protagonists won’t be able to reach the ancestral plane either. Why should they have to give up the one place where they can be free? The one place that promises a future, a lineage of survival and helps them to endure the horrors of this life? The one place they might find the barest hope for self-determination? By defeating Remmick, they kept themselves safe and retained the futures they had already glimpsed.
Decades later, when Stack visits Sammy in his club after all that time, there’s lamentation in his eyes. He and Mary are clearly doing fine, decked out in all the flamboyant finery the 80s can provide. But when Sammy plays for him — the blues, “not that new shit” — there’s also a flicker of light. That night, decades ago, Stack and Mary chose to leave. They chose to go make a life where they could be together. But it came at a cost. Like Remmick before them, they’ll never truly be able to get back to that place of ecstasy and joy. They’ve severed their claim to the freedom their loved ones built for themselves. They’ll never see their people again.
They’ll never be free.
If you’re just finding this newsletter, do us a favour and subscribe. It feeds our fragile egos. And if you’re already a loyal reader, help us out and tell a friend. Happy movie yelling!