Top 10 Film of 2025
28 Years Later review
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return to the genre they helped send into overdrive intent on slowing things back down.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
28 Years Later
Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Alex Garland
Starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman and Emma Laird
28 Years Later Review
Yesterday we took the time to look back on the 2002 Danny Boyle/Alex Garland collaboration 28 Days Later. The dynamic and influential quasi-zombie movie that helped change the game and put zombies back into the mainstream. 23 years later, Boyle and Garland return to continue their story of a country ravaged by the rage virus. Intended as the first part of a new trilogy set, you guessed it, 28 years after the virus was accidentally released by a group of animal activists…28 Years Later dares to do what most legacy sequels would be too afraid to attempt. It chucks nostalgia and expectations to the side and focuses on some hard truths.
The truth is…I’m not sure what people expected a decades later sequel to look like. Most legacy sequels fail because they worry too much about what they think the fanbase it’s built wants to see. For every bold take like Twin Peaks: The Return there are a dozen Fuller House’s. In some ways, 28 Years Later is lucky. It doesn’t have a laundry list of nostalgic beats to feel compelled to repeat. On the other hand, it influenced a boom of zombie films and tv shows that have exhausted every imaginable idea. Boyle and Garland certainly weren’t interested in fan service with 28 Years Later…and they were even less interested in taking from the genre they helped inspire.
That last part may read strangely…but it has happened before. Halloween pushed the slasher genre into overdrive in 1978. It didn’t take long for Halloween II to depart from the feel of its own predecessor to keep up with the lower brow carnage of the films that ripped it off. You can go back even further. Psycho is the grandmamma of the slasher genre. 26 years later, Psycho III was stretching to meet the modern style of movie that might not even exist without the 1960 masterpiece. The 23 years between Days and Years is a long time. The number of zombie stories that have been told (and retold) in the interim would be difficult to count. It’s enough to make one question where you would even begin to break a new entry in the franchise.
The answer, at least for Boyle and Garland, is to slow things down. The infected are still fast…well, some of them…but the story has shifted to a crawl. They imagine a country frozen in time. Specifically, an island community living like turn of the last century colony. Anyone under the age of 30 has never seen a cell phone or used the internet. They’re under an enforced quarantine while the world goes on without them. 28 Years Later is about a 12-year old boy named Spike (Alfie Williams). His mother (Jodie Comer) is very sick…but with no doctors on the island…no one knows what’s wrong with her. His father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has been preparing him for survival in the post-apocalyptic wasteland they have no hope of escaping. This includes a right of passage that begins Spike’s story. His first trip to the mainland…in search of his first infected kill.
28 Years Later is bookended with appearances from a different character. Someone who one suspects will play a major role in the already filmed follow-up 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. That film, directed by Nia DeCosta, is set to arrive next January. The brief glimpse of its new star sets up a more exciting entry in the series. The openly discussed return of Days star Cillian Murphy in that movie opens the door for some of the nostalgia that this one avoids.
As for 28 Years Later itself…well…it makes the hard choice over the most exciting one. This is a slow, hyper focused post-apocalyptic tale about coming of age in Hell. Boyle and Garland see a world trapped in place…surrounded by death. They do introduce us to Alpha infected. A smarter, more lethal enemy who commands the basic infected. It’s a cool concept that leads to the most graphic kills in the movie. But you shouldn’t mistake 28 Years Later for something it isn’t. Despite keeping up appearances by delivering some frenetic zombie action here and there…this is the story of a young boy braving a dangerous world to get his mother to a supposedly crazy doctor on the mainland. Ralph Fiennes pops up as that mysterious doctor…delivering another great genre performance.
All the actors are fantastic, for that matter. Special attention must be paid to Alfie Williams who credibly carries the majority of the picture on his young shoulders. Child actors can break a movie faster than anything…he elevates this one. Boyle’s direction remains strong…though his kinetic style doesn’t always feel like a perfect fit for this material. A stylistic choice he makes to highlight kills is hit or miss at best. He’s always liked an active camera and sharp cuts…Garland’s script doesn’t give him many places where that fits in. The script is strong though. There are surprisingly funny moments mixed in with some unsurprisingly emotional ones. I found the tone mixing to work very well…but your mileage may vary.
The biggest fear in an openly planned first chapter of a trilogy is that it won’t feature a full story of its own. There is a full story here…a satisfying arc for Spike’s coming of age tale. It might not be the story you wanted…much quieter and more patient than anyone could have foreseen a legacy sequel to 28 Days Later ending up. It’s the hard choice…but it’s the right one. 28 Years Later reintroduces us to the world after it ended…setting up an exciting and dynamic second chapter…and putting the focus of a genre back where Boyle and Garland wanted it. Asking what life (and death) means when the world has ended.
Scare Value
28 Years Later probably isn’t the movie you expected. It may not even be the movie you want. Boyle and Garland return to the franchise on an unexpected mission. They start by asking themselves what life would be like 28 years after the rage virus ravaged the country…and committed to the hard truth that it wouldn’t be the most frantic and engaging place to be. They limit their focus to small moments and the meaning of life (and death) after the world has ended. It makes for a great story…but not the most dynamic movie. A brief tease of what’s to come in the second chapter of this new (hopeful) trilogy points to a more exciting future.
4/5
28 Years Later Link
Buy tickets on Fandango
