Being Film #8 for Hooptober 2025
23 years later from 28 Days Later we get 28 Years Later, and while I loved writing that sentence, I didn’t love it as much as I loved the film itself. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return to their 2002 “fast zombie / don’t call it a zombie film” film, in the process not only setting the stage for a new trilogy of films (28 Year Later: The Bone Temple is already shot and set for January 2026) but also bursting every seam of the movie with cutting criticism of English politics while solidly building out the mythology of the world, utterly investing us in its characters, and once again using smartphones both in and on the film to marry the themes of the movie to its execution. Oh, and it’s balls out scary, to boot. This is how you do it.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: 28 years after the rage virus took a hold of the UK (it was pushed back everywhere else) the country is now under permanent quarantine, and life has had to adapt to being cut off from everyone else. The small island of Lindisfarne is better equipped than most, being accessible only by a narrow causeway that is impassable during high tide. It’s on Lindisfarne that 12-year old Spike readies with his father for his first trip to the mainland, making his first kill and becoming a true part of the town. But in almost three decades the Infected have changed, too…and are far more dangerous than anyone can guess. When Spike and his father are trapped overnight, Spike sees a fire burning off in the distance, a sign of something his father won’t discuss, but will become deadly important when Spike disappears with his ailing mother to seek out a madman who might be able to help, provided they can elude the new terrors the current world has to offer…
I think even the most rabid fans of this series had their minds blown when they first watched what Boyle and Garland cooked up for their return to the franchise. After a terrifying prologue that returns to the frantic rapid fire face of the original with an attack for the ages, the film suddenly shifts gears and settles into a beautifully tense rhythm. Much like the original film, 28 Years Later refuses to shy away from current events, evoking strong ties to not only the Brexit situation but also the current reign of war and terror around the globe.
They do this by really structuring the second section of the film around the life of the people on the island, how they live and how they view the situation outside their small sanctuary. The cast is absolutely perfect: Aaron Taylor-Johnson really digs into a character that shifts over time to something I wasn’t expecting (and expect to see further developed in the sequel). But honestly it’s the triptych of Alfie Williams as Spike, Jodie Comer as his mother Isla, and Ralph Fiennes as the mysterious Dr. Kelson who really take this movie into another universe. Zombie movies (I’m using zombie as shorthand for the genre here, I KNOW they’re technically “infected”, thanks) don’t usually have characters this full and nuanced but there are oceans of experiences behind every movement of this cast and it makes some of the tougher moments of 28 Years Later truly emotional.
Were you expecting to choke up in a movie where people get their head and spines ripped out of their bodies? Me either, but there you go.
From a technical perspective the film is also a marvel: working again with editor John Harris who edited the original 2002 film Boyles brings the use of iPhone cameras to a zenith. This is a movie that looks stunning, even as it very clearly exposes its limitations. There’s something so sweet about using what in this world would potentially be the only way you could film something as the means of telling the story. And Boyle shows that there’s a lot you can do, bringing high speed action and some truly grisly thrills to the set pieces.
But if you don’t care about any of that, and only want to see some crazy horror and scares then don’t worry, 28 Years Later has you covered. I saw at least five things I never expected to see in a mainstream movie like this, and that’s not even including the batshit ending that I could see would turn a lot of people off but makes a super kind of sense, especially if you think about the film that I think inspired that ending.
Damn. I loved this movie.
Cinema Dual 
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