RFYL 251: 28 Years Later (with special guest Lucy)

You're listening to the Run for Your Lives podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I'm Daphne.

And I'm Pake.

And this is the Run for Your Lives Podcast.

This episode, we're finally getting to it to kick off season 11 with the apocalyptic horror film 28 Years Later, directed by Danny Boyle and released June 20th, 2025. Yes, it took us a little bit to get there, but we're here. We're coming full circle. We're getting to it. We you know, we've done the other ones, we've talked about how excited we were for these. So we're getting to 28 years. And uh what better way to kick off this season and talk about this movie than with one of our favorite people in the podcast universe around us, as I like to say, um, who I have actually had a conversation about this movie with like a year and a half ago or something. Uh so I'm I'm really excited to do that again. Uh, so you you know her from uh The Bear podcast and the Walking Dead cast and all kinds of other great podcastica stuff. Uh Dr. Lucy Henney, welcome.

Yay! I'm so glad to be here. Yeah, thank you for having me.

I think this is your second time on the show because we did the crossover Anna in the apocalypse for a Christmas episode like a couple of years ago.

I was thinking about that the other day because I was cooking fish or like dealing with tuna, and all I could think about was that song from Anna in the Apocalypse that's like inexplicably in it where the guys are dressed up as fish. And it was like, I'm like fish mother flipper. So I was singing that to myself while I was making the tuna sandwich. It was great.

I was like, I'm gonna think Daphne were here.

Oh I feel like we need to take a road trip pick. We need to, you know, much like Buffalo, Buffalo, where we record in a different city every week. Maybe we should just fly over and visit the.

Yeah, I was gonna say he's in road trip at first.

It's like uh it might be hard to get there to just music roads, but hey, Daryl Dixon managed it, so you guys can manage it. Oh my gosh. It might take 28 years, but yeah. Yeah, oh my gosh.

Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about this one. I think, you know, as we mentioned a little bit, it came out like mid last year, so it was like almost a year ago. By the time this comes out, it'll be close to a year. And I feel like it's a movie that we were waiting so long for, but we never really knew if we were gonna get it. It was just, I wonder if they're ever gonna do something with that because the original movie really kind of jumpstarted this fast moving, infected Palooza that we've seen over the last like 23 years. I think it's been 23 years. And you just have to wonder how things evolved. You know, what does it what does that world even look like now? And thankfully, Alex Garland, Danny Boyle came back together to give us this one so that we could get a glimpse into that world. Yeah. End of podcast.

So now that we've yeah, thoroughly covered that, everything we need to say about this movie.

Yeah.

You've got it all now.

Yep. Um, so we'll kick it off the way we always do with some production notes. It was filmed in the holy island of Lindisfarne, Cheddar Gorge, and Newcastle upon Tyne in England. It is the first film in the new trilogy by the creators of Twenty-Eight Days Later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. Was nominated for a BAFTA for Outstanding British Film, did not get any love from the Oscars, and I'm still a little perplexed.

Yeah. Rewatching it this however many time for this was yeah, I'm there's so many things. I was like, the visual effects, the cinematography, the score.

Yeah.

A lot of the acting. I was like, how did this get overlooked?

I don't know. They they weren't looking at the same things that we were, I guess.

Yeah.

So the budget for this one was 60 million. It grossed 151.3 million at the box office. It's 115 minutes long. Paik, give us a synopsis. I don't think this is the one from IMDB.

It's not. I didn't like that one.

I didn't like it either. When I was looking up some stuff earlier, I'm thinking he's not gonna pick that.

No, so I kind of went with uh something more near and dear to Lucy's heart, and this one kind of comes from this one comes from Wikipedia. Um represent uh Yeah, a boy living in a post-apocalyptic world undertakes a hazardous journey with his ill mother in an effort to obtain medical treatment for her.

I like that. Amazing. I like that. It's not what they slam us in the face with at the very beginning of the movie, but it becomes that. And I think it it represents the heart of the story really, really well.

Yes.

And I know that you're gonna say something about the way that I had the characters listed because the main character really is Spike, not Jamie. But I don't always get to get in the document and reorder things. So I'm bringing it up before you can.

Okay. Yeah, uh we're gonna cover this week. Um, usually when we have a guest, we kind of go like by points and things like that. But as I mentioned like last year, uh me and Lucy and Jason and Karen over on uh I think it was on the Deadcast feed or Cast of Us feed. Uh yeah, had covered this movie like days after it released in theaters, and so we kind of broke that down by a lot of our favorite points and topics on that. So Lucy and I have had that discussion. Um we will do it in more run for your lives uh fashion of kind of breaking it down character by character character arcs and and looking at it that way and just having our you know free-flow discussions that way. Although still, when doing my notes for that, it's still like 75 to 80% spike, and then I've just got a few other notes about some other things.

But I think that works well though, because there have been movies, especially last season, that it was more of on it was more of an ensemble cast and not like one by one. And so so much of this movie is Spike. I mean, he is the heart of it, really truly. And so I I think it's fine for so many of your notes to be Spike, because so many of mine are.

Yeah. I also think this film is such a good one to talk about in terms of character. Yeah. Like it's such a character-driven film, it's so rich with character development, and it's just I can't wait to get into it because I think it's just rich with moments and development and things that just make it such a pleasure to watch and rewatch and revisit. Yes.

Agreed. So before we jump completely in, there were a couple things I wanted to say. One, I remember people when they saw this movie, a lot of comments online were about the amount of male appendages that were available for view in this movie. Um, that was one thing. Um and then there were people that were a little disappointed because they said it didn't feel like the first movie in the way that they wanted it to. And while I think I feel like I feel like it's different, but in watching it again, there were little things throughout that no, this is absolutely connected to the first one. Absolutely has similar things that connect it. But it's not we're not going to get Jim's story because this isn't Jim's story, this is Spike's story.

I feel like it is very similar, though. Like there's some more fantastical elements, there's some newer ideas that are uh imposed in this, as it's a lot further into the uh apocalypse, and there's different things you can explore. But it it I guess at the end of the day, if you boil it down, it's kind of a fish out of water story as you have a regular guy who wakes up from a coma and now the world is in some kind of rage virus apocalypse, and he's having to learn what that world around him is while dealing with other people who have their own ulterior motives and kind of realizing that not everybody is as helpful as they seem. It's kind of the same thing. It's like, yeah, Spike was born and lived in this apocalypse, but he's lived most of his life on this isolated island that's pretty well secured and safe. So we're also seeing this fish out of water, and it's also kind of a coming-of-age story for him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very much a like buildings roman, isn't it? It's like the the growth of this boy into a man over the course of this film.

And and he's learning about the world around him that he was not really sure what it was and having to figure it out as he goes. It's it is a very similar movie in that way.

It's about life. It's about growing and adapting to the world that you're in. And even to the point of Eric and the things that he was saying to him, realizing that his little island world and then even this bigger mainland is just a piece. There's so much more out there where things are what we would consider much more normal compared to what they're going through here, which is a community and a and a country that's just basically been isolated and blocked off like it doesn't exist anymore.

Yeah. But then beautifully, it's also about death, which I think is brilliant. It's it's about how to live life and also how to how to die in a way and how to deal with the the specter of death that hangs over you, and and it I didn't expect, I think, when I first watched this film for it to be as emotionally rewarding as it is at the end. Like it's just such in many ways, such a lovely, nice film. Like we were talking about it in the car, uh, because Peter was like, What are you gonna say about the film? And I was like, you know, lots of different things on my mind. And one of the things he said that stuck out to me was like, all these things that on paper should be horrifying actually become these amazing acts of love in the film, like getting handed your dead mother's skull should be awful, but it's actually this really beautiful moment of like catharsis and freeing and deep emotion. Um, and yeah, I guess that's something I don't know if this is a good segue into Jamie, but that's something that Jamie doesn't see or doesn't let himself see in the world, is beneath that surface level of what things look like, how they actually are.

Yeah. I wondered if he, with his wife's illness, even wanted to know what it was. I feel like in some ways he was just waiting for whatever was going to happen and not really thinking beyond that because he was trying to raise a son and with a sick wife, and it you could tell that it drained him a lot, and he didn't have a lot of outlets.

Yeah. Since you had Jamie at the top of the dock, and I actually don't have any specific notes about just him, because everything I have with him really is tied in with his interactions with Spike. So just off the dome, I'll just uh, you know, free-flow here. Uh, but thoughts on that as you're talking about that, as I think what I notice about his character is that it's I don't know if it's denial, it could be, to some degree, but yeah, it's just he does kind of personify that I don't want to face it. So I think that might be a reason he takes Spike out earlier than he's supposed to. Spike is younger than he's supposed to be when he goes on this journey.

Absolutely.

And I think he's just like, we just need to get away. We need to do something else, move forward, uh, where you can tell that he kind of he goes out and he drinks a lot, and he's just kind of very he's looking for all of these outlets to not deal with what's going on at home. And it's everything that he can do to do that. And I think that there's a lot of subtleties that Spike is picking up on that I think Jamie's not even meaning to put out there, but there's all these things where he just he seems to be distancing himself from pain and life and death and all of these things to where it's just like all of its whatever. So this is in my notes, but it's an important moment. There's a little line that I don't think he has any intention of meaning it the way that I think Spike picks up on it. It's a very subtle. This movie does a great job of like subtle things that if you miss it, you missed it. Because they're not gonna like speak, you know, they're not gonna explain it or go back, you know, cover it again. But whenever they are the the the infected that's hanging upside down that Jimmy had had hung up and then had left to die there. And when Jamie is instructing Spike kill it, you know, it's it's not a human, basically, is like because the infection got to its brain and it's lost its mind. And when you've lost your mind, you you know, you don't have no mind, you have no soul. Oh. And what Spike has been dealing with is his mother going through these fits and episodes of in and out of lucidity and losing her mind. And it starts I think that's what really starts this train of of Spike focusing in on this like, do you even care about her anymore? Do you even love her? Do you even view her as anything that you want to save, or are you just ready for her to die?

Yeah. Yeah. I think he like Yeah, I think that's super on the nose. And the line that broke my heart, I think, was when his mum says to him, when Isla says to Spike at the Bone Temple, I thought someone else would tell you. I was just like, Oh, someone should have told this kid, but no one no one did. Yeah. And that's so neglectful, and that's cost him this innocence of of hope. And Peter described it as the story is about a boy who goes looking for a wizard, like to cure something, like it's a quest narrative, and yeah. I think the thing we we came to with Jamie, because I I find Jamie a fascinating character because I think he's actually quite a good dad. Like, I think there's a lot that he does in this where actually he clearly loves his son a lot and does his best by him. And there's a couple of moments where I'm like, wow, for a portrayal of like masculine strength, inverted commas, you're actually doing quite a good job of being quite emotionally in tune with your son. But he's not honest, he's not an honest man, he's not honest with himself. I don't think he sets out to like be duplicitous, but you see a range of behaviours where it's a slippery slope with lying, whether it's I mean, the worst one is probably of course being unfaithful. But even then, I would argue it's obviously not a good thing to do. I'm not endorsing it, but the pressure of having essentially lost your partner, they've become someone completely different. That's very isolating. Um he exaggerates when he talks about what Spike did, but again, that's through this kind of bravado and male pride. Is anyone hurt by that lie? You know, is it a white lie? It's there's lots of instances where he could be more honest than he is, but there are a few instances where I think he lies for an evil reason. I think it's all from all the wrong action coming from a place that is not a malicious place. And I think Aaron Taylor Johnson is one of those actors. I'm sure I said this to you before, Peg, but like I always forget how good he is. I never seek out a film because he's in it. I'm never like, oh, it's an Aaron TJ film, I'll go and see it. I'm always just like, oh whatever. Then I watch him on the screen and I'm like, this guy's brilliant. He's so good. Why don't I watch more things with Aaron Taylor Johnson in them? And then the cycle repeats.

It is funny because it's very similar. Because I mean, obviously, like probably like a lot of people, my first like my introduction to him was kick-ass. Kick ass. And to see, you know, it's very different, you know, where the trajectory he's gone on since then. But then yeah, he's done like I still haven't watched Craven, and like there's always these kind of like kind of blockbuster-y movies that are just like, you know, whatever. But then yeah, when you stumble across him doing something like this, or even the the role he played in Osferatu, as like small as it was.

Yeah, God he's so good though. Yeah, he was so great in that film, by the way.

Loved it.

I was thinking about it because of him. I was like, oh yeah.

Yeah, I have to agree. I don't think that he lies to Spike to it's not malicious. He really, I think some of it is I don't think he wanted to admit it to himself.

Yeah.

And because of that, he really didn't feel like he could have the conversation because Spike, at his age, is at the age, the pre-teenage age, where they're gonna be asking questions, like they're gonna wanna know. And I don't think he felt probably like he was gonna be able to answer those questions.

Yeah. If he would have been better at communication and honesty, this whole movie would never have happened.

Right. Yeah. It's part of character, it's part of the story.

Be because like honestly, I feel like that's what drives Spike to the point that he is. It's because of the things that he picks up on on this like distance and the things that his father says that makes him go, like, well, he doesn't give a shit about mom anymore, so it's up to me to step up and be the man and do it. Yep. And then I think it's when he's telling those tall tales at the party, was like, and he did this, and he d and he's like, I missed all those shots. He's like, no, he's building him up to be the giant killer.

Yeah.

When really he's like, I was scared the whole time. I was pissing myself, and it was just a horrible traumatic moment. And it kind of pushes him to be like, well, now people are gonna want to see me this way, or my dad's built me up to be this way, and I don't feel that way. I feel like I was just a scared little child. So now I have to take mom out there to the mainland on my own and prove that I'm capable the way that he wants to see me.

Yeah. What I loved as well was two things. One is how gentle with him Jamie is in the attic when Spike apologizes. I thought to me that's the mark of his like character, because there's so many shows where you could watch that and the dad's gonna be an asshole and be like, Yeah, you should be sorry, or something, you know, just be like, Yeah, well. Whereas he actually really holds space for him in that moment and he's like, You don't have to be sorry, you did well. Um, and I'd forgotten how much he actually teaches him about standing your ground, turn round, defend, run again, turn round, defend, and you see him do that when he's on his journey with his mum. Yeah, so it does stick, like he does learn something, he does take it. And if we may speculate into the future, I am I'm interested to what this means for the kind of if there will be an arc with Jim from 28 Days, because the logical arc would be Spike goes out and finds the father he never had, and it's a whole thing, but that doesn't sit with me for this because it's not like he has a terrible dad who he needs to get away. Like I'm quite intrigued to see how that plays out. Um, and I was sad that we didn't get any Jamie in the second film. Um I did feel that like this guy would burn the woods to the ground to find his son, like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

Given what we saw at the end of the movie, the way he ran into the water, the high tide, knowing the current could drag him off, he wanted to will himself across that causeway so that he could go and find his son. I mean, you could just see the angst and the frustration and the fear in him in that moment as he runs across.

I did laugh a little bit at the baby being called Isla because part of me was like, isn't Jamie just gonna be like, Am I married to a baby now? Is that my wife? Benjamin Button, my wife? Kelsa! Kelsa! I'm so confused. He is insane. How did he do it? Reinhards. Spike's like, enjoy having an affair with a newborn. Like, that's gonna ruin your night. Like, oh my god. It just really made me laugh. Um but yeah, I I the other thing I wondered, and this is complete conjecture on my part is I think. Think the Jimmies are known to the people on Lindisfarne. I don't think they know them in depth. I don't think they know the truth of what they do. But Spike's dad was not surprised to see Jimmy carved into that body. So I think they're I can totally understand why you wouldn't tell Spike about them. Um but he does say they're weird, weird people out there, and I'm like, ah so like that makes sense because then I was like, well, why wouldn't the Jimmies have come to Lindisfarne? And I'm like, well, what we learn in the second film, they're not stupid enough to try and take over a whole well-protected fortified island. But I just wondered in the back of my head, I was like, he just doesn't seem shocked by this in the way that you might expect. So yeah, I think Jimmy's legend is maybe a bit further spread than we're led to believe on first watch.

Yeah, there's a lot that I I want to try to separate a little bit and not go like no no major spoilers or talking about Bone Temple too much, just because we will get to that movie. Uh but you know, hopefully people have watched that by this point too, uh, who are fans of this and wanted to listen to that. But but in case not. Um but yeah, but there's definitely things that like we'll kind of maybe hint at a little bit without like giving away too much stuff. But but yeah, um so I guess we gotta just really break into we've we've talked about a lot of stuff already, but really breaking down Spike and his arc and kind of everything he goes through. Uh yeah, and as we learned, gonna give some back, you know, ground, is after the events of all the previous movies that the infected have been contained to the British mainland. So as an island, it's the infected world. And those who live there are just having to deal with the infected as the new normal. There are other countries that monitor and make sure that everyone stays there. They do these like quarantine runs.

Yep.

Uh, and then as we see with Eric, you know, if anyone somehow ends up on there, then they can never leave. It's a permanent quarantine in perpetuity. Like the the British mainland has just become like that's the infected place, and we just ignore that, and uh that's we just let that happen there. Uh, and the rest of the world carries on.

Yep. I mean, it's not too far off. What can I say? It's not amazing here.

It sounds like things have continued, business as usual, everywhere else, you know, with delivery drivers and cell phones and all of that have just continued while things have gone much more primitive.

It's a fascinating juxtaposition, right? Like it there's iPhones.

Like, what the fuck?

Yeah. Yeah.

It is that we get that little moment of, oh, the world has just picked back up and moved on. Uh yeah, so we meet Spike. I do I love this kid so much. Like, he easily may be one of my favorite movie characters in recent history, uh, especially with this movie. Again, no like spoilers for Bone Temple, that's not really his movie, though.

I think he's in it.

I don't think it's his movie. There's much more big focus is this is his movie, and it's so good. And what we'll get to a lot of that. Uh we did talk about it, so I'll get that part out of the way, I guess, is because we talked about it when we did it on um Cast of Us or whatever. My personal connection to that, and I've probably talked about it on this podcast in some degree in the five years, five and a half years we've done it. But I think why I gravitate towards Spike so much uh is I lost my mother to cancer when I was eleven. Or actually, like the week or two before I turned twelve. So very much in the exact same age of of Spike here. So this entire arc with his mother and you know eventually leading to him accepting her death, it was very familiar and cathartic to me. I just really latch on to him as a character. The scene of him climbing the skull tower to give her that perfect final resting place. It just one of the most emotionally impactful moments for me, in like the best way. It's always a very good cry. Every time I watch this movie, it's just like so emotional. Yeah, it's so good. Uh like you think it'd be like, oh, it should be it would be a hard watch, but no, it's like as you said earlier, Lucy, it's it is beautiful in like a weird kind of yes, it's macabre, it's death, and it's bones and skulls and memento mori, but it's so beautiful at the same time. It really is.

I felt like it was a ceremony, like him taking that skull to the top. It was like a r not a rite of passage, but just some sort of celebration of her life in a very subtle, quiet way.

Yeah.

And giving her the best spot, which is what the doctor told him to do, like put her in the best spot, and he, of course, took her to the top, and I just thought it was poignant and beautiful.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it really is. It's it's yeah, it just kind of hits it hits different after a loss. I think it hits different after this kind of I don't know. It it those moments where you're thinking about life and death and getting to pick the way you want to go. You know, there are many deaths and you know, this is a good one. And it's just oh god, I got really emotional watching it again. I was like, Why am I watching that? And I'm like, oh, it's so I can talk to Daphne and Pake about it, so it's worth it.

But also, oh no no, the feelings like I I'm a big softy though, so sometimes I love to just dive into the feelings. So it's the same way where like I'm like I'm looking forward to it. I'm like, oh I can't wait to watch this movie again, so that I can get to that end and I am destroyed. Like I need it.

Sometimes if you feel like you need to get in touch with your feelings because of other stuff that's going on, and you can't really connect the way you want to, go if you go back and watch something like this, or a movie that's gonna pull you into that space and help you process and get to that point, then sometimes facing it is the best thing to do. Just dive in and and do it that way. I thought the whole piece, and here we are, we're really kind of t talking about the end. The whole part, right from the moment that he drugs Spike and Spike sits down, to me, from there till the time Spike puts her skull on top, is just like one like one ceremony and tribute for his mother. Even the part where she's walking down toward Kelson because he's gonna release her from this earth, basically. It all just to me was almost tranquil in the way that it just was calm and careful, and the interactions that she had with Spike just before it were just so beautiful that it you can't help but get emotional or at least feel impacted by watching it.

Yeah. It's funny, because I I have notes throughout the whole movie, like in order, but like I'm like, I've gotta skip ahead because we're talking about this stuff now.

So yeah, we have to.

It's that moment it's it's wild though. Like you really see the change, and I don't know if it's just like the way it's filmed. I I mean there's definitely a lot of props I'm gonna give to Alfie Williams in that role playing uh Spike, but then I mean, and then Jodie Comer and Ray Fiennes carry so much of that weight and like really lift that up too. But like throughout the movie, you see Spike has this air of an adolescent who is reaching maturity in many ways through the movie, but yet this moment where he's sitting there with Kelson and he is told, Your mother's going to die soon, there is no cure, nothing's gonna work. I truly see him in that scene, in that moment, as just this scared and helpless little boy that he is right there.

Yeah.

He almost looks younger than he's looked the whole movie in that scene. He's just and maybe it's because of Ray finds, you know, Kelson towering over him, and it's just He just looks like a little child. And you just see him scared and and helpless, like I said, and then yeah, that's that's where his young age is really like shining through there. And I'm all I can think is just like somebody who like works with kids around like this kind of age range and some that like have trauma like trauma and and stuff. I just wanna I just want to hug him. Just give him a hug. He just needs a hug. Uh but I see me in him in that moment too. Like there's a lot of like I mentioned with like what I've you know went through at that age, uh, and watching him like go through the stages of grief pretty quickly. Uh, you know, from like the I don't understand what are you telling me? Like, we came all this way, and you s you're saying you can't help her, to the bargaining of like, just tell me I you know, I'll go into the town and I'll go look at the hospitals and what medicine, the old medicine, tell me what I need to get, and I'll get it, and I'll bring it to you, and uh all of this stuff to just like no, this can't be happening. What are you telling? It's like we came all this way, and it's not and then he's mad about it, and he's just like, you see him go through all these steps all the way to acceptance that you know this is what's happened, and that closure of placing the skull, and like I said, it wrecks me in the best way every time. Uh it's so good.

Yeah. And he is, of course, a teen dad by the end of it as well. I was like, he goes through his hiring experience, and it's like, by the way, you have a kid now, and he's like, Oh, what you go. That sounds like a Jamie problem. We're gonna take a little detour back to back home real quick. Sneak in the we're gonna sneak back to the island, ditch this, and then uh carry on our way. But it's it's and I think the thing that I love about the scene um with Isla and Kelson and Spike is the honesty of it. Like, Isla, it's like a weight's been lifted from her because she finally has confirmation. Like, she's been being gaslit by her own mind, but also by the people around her who don't have the capacity to tell her the truth or to speculate. And I mean, without diagnostic equipment, I can sympathize with that. You don't want to be like, Yeah, I think you're probably, you know, gonna die. Um but she's she's lighter, she's almost euphoric that she's had this kind of confirmation being treated and cared for by this medical professional, and Kelson doesn't beat around the bush at all. He he's just very direct with Spike in a very kind way, and for all that Jamie's lies to protect his son or to save him from harm, here we see that honesty can also be kind, um, even if it hurts.

Yeah. He was so careful with the way that he spoke to them about her not surviving much longer.

Yeah.

He was direct, but he was also careful. I've I feel like he understood what needed to be done and said without even really knowing what Spike's background was at all. Like what I mean, he had very little information. And you have to imagine that Isla was in that position where being told, okay, this this is, you know, what I think it is, and this is the likely outcome. It had to have been a relief because of everything she had been through. Because we've talked about what Jamie went through, we talked about what Spike went through. What Isla herself went through, being in a bed day in and day out, basically a prisoner of her own mind.

Yeah.

Not knowing.

You know what she says is when I'm confused, I know I'm confused.

Yeah.

And I'm shocked, I shock myself with the crazy things that I say, but I say them anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. She's been a prisoner of her own mind, and to know that at some point, relatively soon, she's gonna be free of that had to be a huge relief despite knowing that she was leaving her son behind.

It already hurts. Like, oh, that broke me.

Like what she said to Spike before she walked to be with Dr. Kelson before her I I call it her ascension. Um she was just so sweet and kind, and I felt like she was lucid at that point when she's having those conversations with him, and I was grateful for that for Spike's sake that his mom was able to be his mom in those moments because he's gotten used to the episodes and things that she was going through, and so to have those precious moments with her before I'm sure m mean everything and will mean everything to him going forward.

Yeah.

I agree.

Yeah. This is like you know, I mentioned how young you really can tell he is in that moment, but throughout a lot of the movie, it is that situation where he's gotta grow up fast, and you see him not only, you know, she calling him dad, uh, but but kind of having to like, you know, not really like be that like a father to her, but in a way, like he's taking care of her. Yes, we're going out, we're going, we're gonna go find a doctor, we're gonna get a help. And when she's having those kind of like moments where she's like lost in her brain, is being able to direct, okay, you know, like instead of getting like weirded out by the things she's saying, just being like, Okay, we'll just roll with that and we'll we'll figure out what to do. Well, I'm just gonna need you to do this. Okay, we need to run now, we're gonna go here. I'm not leaving her behind, we're gonna do this. To those moments where she's kind of who's gonna be, you know, who are you talking about? We're talking about you. Like he's just very like very matter-of-fact, where he's gotta grow up and just know, like, this is what it is. And even when like Eric is around and kind of giving her shit, it's like he's gonna stand up for her and defend her and protect her. Like, no, it's like she she can't help it. That's what she's like going through right now. That's why we're here. Yeah, that's why we're here, that's where we're going, and that's that's my mission. It's like, you want to wander off and like you know, leave us. Thanks for saving us, but if you don't want to stick around, you don't have to, because I'm this is what I'm doing.

That's he plays along. Like he knows he has to. And I mean, what an incredibly risky, crazy thing to do. To take your mother who is prone to these episodes, knowing that he's not gonna be able to control every second of her out there and what she might do, to take her out there on his own to do this because no one else was going to, let's be real. Jamie was not gonna do this. He'd had opportunities to do this, he was never gonna do it. And Spike was incredibly brave. I think one of the things that really stood out to me is when we meet him and he's out in on the mainland for the first time and shooting the sl uh, what are the the slow slows or the slow lows?

Yeah.

And his hand is shaking. Like you can tell, like, even though he's well trained to do this, his hand is shaking. But by the time we get through this, and after he's left um Isla, the baby, back on the island, he's much more confident and competent with the bow and arrow.

Yeah.

It's like the confidence is built up, the experience is there, he's braver, he's stronger now. And that is I think one simple way of just looking at the difference between him and the beginning and the and the end is the confidence that he gets in the maturity of going through everything that he went through in this movie.

Yeah, because when we we first see him, you know, jump back to the beginning now, uh is yeah, it's like this day that his dad is taking him to the mainland to like get his first kills of infected that I I guess there's still a lot of lore and background to this island and this community that we don't know, that I'm very curious about.

Yeah.

That I hope we get uh in the future. But I guess it's some rite of passage that all young men have to take is like going to the mainland, getting their kills kind of it's this, you know, bec and going from boy to man kind of idea. Uh and as I said, he's younger than he's supposed to be while doing this, because like, you know, he's only twelve, then he's supposed to be a little bit older. It's like, but he's been preparing, his dad feels he's ready, and again, maybe the sickness and the things going on with his mom is part of that, you know, we gotta grow up fast and we're just gonna move on, and we're gonna like whatever we can do to get out and and ignore that.

Well, you also don't have any guaranteed time. I mean, Jamie could go out to do something in a month and end up dead and not be there for his family, so he probably is looking at it to the point of okay, well, you know what? He might not be 14 or 15, but he's 12 and he's strong, and I'm gonna take him now. I may not get the opportunity to do it another time.

Yeah.

And so it's important to do that.

Yeah, because it is an interesting community, like it's very uh safe and secure and close-knit, but at the same time, they don't take risks. It's like, yeah, this this part of the thing, they do go out to the mainland, it is part of what they do, with an understanding that there's a strict, like, we're not going out to save anybody. If you don't come back, you don't come back. You leave at your own risk. We don't put unnecessary risk on other people. The people that take their risks, that's theirs and theirs alone. And it's it's an interesting community, and there's a lot of other things that are I feel like there's and I don't know if it's like a like sinister or if it's just like something else that's going on in that community, because we have all these weird flashes of the people in masks, and like they almost seem to be training the other younger children on the island, not just to defend themselves, but to be like soldiers. Like, there's a lot of other things that are going on that they don't dive into, but some of those flashbacks, I'm even like, is that real? Is it the past? Is it happening now? Is it Isla's like fever dreams? Like, what are because they it's very vague in a lot of ways on purpose. And I don't know, I want those answers.

Uh that whole Boots poem. Like that's getting read. That it's it's a Rudyard Kipling poem.

Yes, it's uh 1915 recording of actor Taylor Holmes reading this Rudyard Kipl uh Rudyard Kipling poem Boots.

It's jarring. But it kills the actor, and his friggin' Wikipedia picture is terrifying. He has crazy eyes. Like I just like he's the kind of picture you'd expect to see. Oh my god, he does have crazy eyes. Doesn't he have murder eyes? I looked up and I was like, oh, I bet it's just some like rinky-dink old actor, and then I looked and I was like, oh no, I don't like that. Like he's scary looking. Um oh the I mean the trailer for this film was incredible. It was like a film in and of itself, and they used boots in it. And yeah, I mean my re I I find the the setup of the island really, really interesting because they they do a lot of quite like what's the word, almost like hallucinatory film making where they're interspersing images of like the First World War and also I think it's Henry V, like a filmed production of Shakespeare's Henry V, which depicts I think it's the Battle of Agincourt, which is generally perceived to be a big success, a big victory for England in particular. Um it's like the mythologizing of the country, like the going back to like a grassroots kind of English folk horror almost. And I I I loved it. I loved it even more the second time I watched it. I was like, it's so spooky. But I I I'm more satisfied on the second viewing that the island is just a bit bleak rather than there's a hidden sinister secret, but the way they shoot it puts you so ill at ease, and I think it also plays on what we've learned now from over a decade of saturation in the zombie genre that things are not always what they seem and bad things are lying under the surface. But I loved like on the wall. Um in the UK we have these kids' books called Ladybird books, and they've got a very specific style of illustration, and it's all like you know, a guide to butterflies and things like that, and they've got ladybird style pictures on the wall of like the jobs you can have in the community. Yes. And it's like Baker, soldier, hunter, like it's I was like, wow, everything gets stripped right back to the the kind of bare minimum. But they still endure and survive, and I find that really fascinating. I have to say I don't trust the guys on watch very much. They tend to be asleep whenever we see something. I think the tide would make you lazy that way though, because it's such a good natural protection. Yeah. Yeah. But that scene where they're running towards it with Samson following them under the northern lights is stunning. Like absolutely stunning. Um but I was just like, these guys should be awake. Why are they asleep? Oh my god. Even though I knew they were gonna be fine this time, I was still quite stressed out about it.