We Need to Talk About the Massively Hung Zombie in 28 Years Later

Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of 28 Years Later.

Just like 28 Days Later, the 2002 collaboration between director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, 28 Years Later is brimming with indelible imagery: an abandoned Shell gas station with the S long burned out, a conical tower of human skulls surrounded by bone-covered trees. In returning to the rage-virus-ravaged U.K. from the original film, the pair have created a richly textured world that’s sometimes gruesome, sometimes beautiful, and often strangely both. They have also created a zombie with a distractingly large penis on prominent display in all his scenes.

I don’t use the phrase “distractingly large” lightly. Yes, male nudity in films remains enough of a rarity that the presence of any penis can pull focus — and there are certainly plenty of them in 28 Years Later. The movie takes place so long after the initial rage-virus outbreak, it makes sense that the infected aren’t wearing clothes anymore, and all their private parts have become public. But while the rampant zombie nudity is notable, it falls to the wayside once we meet the alpha (Chi Lewis-Parry), the ostensible leader of the infected, who is bigger, stronger, and distinctly more endowed than any of his compatriots. As we learn in the film, time has transformed the infected in different ways. Some are fat, slow, and easily dispatched as they crawl along the ground looking for worms to eat. Others are the same fast and frenzied zombies that made 28 Days Later so scary (and contributed to the passionate debate over whether the term “zombie” was appropriate). And at least one is the alpha: able to withstand an onslaught of arrows and pull off heads with spines still attached. The eccentric Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) calls him Samson, because Goliath was presumably too on the nose.

There is substantial exposition peppered throughout 28 Years Later, but the meandering plot takes precedence over the logistics of this world. With so much time devoted to 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), venturing from their island village to the zombie-infested mainland, and then Spike returning to find Kelson and medical care for his ailing mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), the film never gets around to explaining the origins of the alpha. It’s also not as though Garland — the writer behind Annihilation, Men, and Civil War — is a fan of straightforward answers. Seeing the well-hung zombie, however, does raise a number of questions I found myself fixated on while watching the movie. Did the rage virus enhance Samson’s natural endowment? (We’re told it has a steroidlike effect on some of the infected, but steroids are more associated with shrinking testicles than lengthening shafts.) Does he have enough self-awareness to consider it a source of pride? Is he the alpha because he has a big dick, or does he have a big dick because he’s the alpha?

There is, believe it or not, plenty to unpack about the penis, not to mention the larger role full-frontal male nudity has played in this series. Following the initial outbreak of the rage virus, 28 Days Later opens with an overhead shot of bicycle messenger Jim (Cillian Murphy) waking up from a coma, naked in a hospital bed. There is no explanation for why Jim doesn’t have a gown or at least a blanket to cover himself with. We can assume he was forgotten during a rushed hospital evacuation, but did someone strip him on the way out? The specifics aren’t really what matters, though. Jim’s nude body, jarring to audiences unaccustomed to an onscreen penis, has a more symbolic purpose: It reflects his vulnerability, and, more importantly, the societal collapse he’s slept through. Clothes are a sign of civilization; nudity is anarchic. The penis is a signal that, zombies aside, 28 Days Later is in large part about regression to a more primitive state. We ultimately see that play out with the renegade soldiers led by Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) in the film’s third act. They have promised salvation with the express purpose of luring women to their fortified mansion for sexual slavery. Even as they playact at manners, they have (in a mere 28 days!) abandoned their humanity for their basest instincts, becoming would-be rapists with the stated purpose of propagating the human species.

The explosion of nudity in 28 Years Later makes sense for logistical but also thematic reasons, as society has further devolved in the nearly three decades since the initial outbreak. While the island community where Spike and his family live has achieved something resembling normalcy, the mainland has been completely abandoned. The U.K. is indefinitely quarantined, with any survivors left to fend for themselves. This essentially means the territory has been ceded to the infected, who have lost their cognition, and with it, any ability to form a real civilization of their own. These creatures are all instinct: hunt, kill, eat, and, in one of the film’s biggest twists, reproduce.

When Spike and Isla encounter a pregnant infected woman on an abandoned train, we learn that the infected can give birth to healthy (rage-free) infants as Isla helps deliver the baby. It’s also heavily implied, given Samson’s dogged pursuit of the child for the remainder of the film, that the alpha is the father. In these moments, it suddenly becomes clear that the zombies’ dangly bits aren’t there just for show. With apologies for the phallocentrism, the alpha may be the leader because he walks around with eye-catching proof of his ability to reproduce, and the infected, however addled, maintain an innate drive to keep their line going. This is society at its most primal.

Of course, it’s possible I’m overthinking this. Maybe the alpha is hung because the special-effects makeup department went a little overboard on the prosthetic. Given the intentionality in Boyle’s and Garland’s work, however, I’m inclined to think that penis is front and center for a reason. 28 Years Later is, like its predecessor, a movie about regression — it ends with Spike abandoning the civilization he knows and choosing to live in the wild. The alpha as a crude avatar for masculine power makes perfect sense in that context. Still, I have those lingering questions to mull over, and even more with the knowledge that Samson may have fathered a child. Is Samson impregnating all the infected he can? Are these women turned before or after conception? What exactly do the infected do with healthy human babies, and how do the infants stay healthy in the first place? (Dr. Kelson explains this as the “magic of placenta,” but that feels like hand-waving.) Here’s hoping Samson and his impressive appendage return in the next movie to clear up some of the confusion — or at least to confirm my increasing suspicion that the title 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a double entendre.