Ask JKM a Question: 28 Months Later?

Regular reader, SGB, writes:

"As I read your thought-provoking reviews of both 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later,  I was wondering what do you think 28 Months Later should be about when it is made?"

SGB, I love your question, and think it's a great one. I would like a new entry in the franchise to speak as relevantly to the post-2010 Age as 28 Days Later spoke to the burgeoning War on Terror Age, immediately post-911.

In other words, I think the franchise needs to tell a story about the post-immediate crisis world, or the "new normal" following the burn-out of the rage epidemic.  

Certainly, there must be enclaves of human society post-"rage" virus.  How are these societies organized? Who runs them, and under what rules and philosophies?  After the rage crisis burns out...what comes next?

Although rage-zombies would certainly play a role in any new franchise story (perhaps as the deliberate creations/minions of anarchists or the power-hungry...), I think the long amount of time -- 28 Months Later (over two years...) -- means that humanity and civilization must be staging some kind of comeback, even if only in rural, geographically-isolated locations.  

Do these survivors forsake technology and return to pre-industrialized ways?  

Or have survivors accepted curtailment of personal freedoms for technology, pervasive security forces and constant surveillance?    

I would submit that 28 Months Later should deal with the brave new world rising among the ashes of the destroyed one, and the questions that such a world raises.  I also think the basis for the film could be a line from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country that I've always remembered and admired (roughly paraphrased):  "If there is a brave new world, then our generation will have the most difficult time living in it."

When one considers about how much even incremental social change has been resisted by many folks post-2008 one can also imagine the seeds for a story set in this 28 Days Later universe.  

Imagine how catastrophic change -- the end of capitalism? the end of feminism? the end of the traditional family unit? the rise of a theocracy?  -- would upset the basis for any new culture.  And imagine how those who lived in the peace and prosperity of the last pre-rage age would feel about such change.

In some way, this notion of social order changing may tread on the heels of George Romero's universe, but 28 Months Later could distinguish itself further from the Living Dead pack by deliberately and decisively moving beyond a crisis story into the hows and whys of a post-plague civilization (or civilizations...).  

Imagine a theocratic ruler keeping citizens in line with the threat of releasing the virus again, against those who trespass or sin against his or her ideas of morality? Or imagine a new ruler, desperate for resources, re-distributing the wealth of the survivors at his whim, with the threat of rage-plague backing him up...

These are just a few of the ideas off the top of my head, but the best horror movies always speak to real world scenarios and reflect their time periods.  That axiom is a good starting place for 28 Months Later.