I’ve spent seventeen years picturing what Britain might look like after the Rage virus finished eating it, and 28 Years Later finally lets us in. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return with a sequel that is scrappy, stylish, and strangely kind. The film never recaptures what made 28 Days Later so popular, yet the return of the raging arrived precisely at the moment horror films were feeling a bit sluggish. (Technically they’re not zombies in the classical sense.) Think of it as a rough diamond rather than a polished gem, still sharp enough to leave a mark.
Garland’s script brushes aside 2007’s 28 Weeks Later with a sly title card and deposits us on Holy Island, an isolated village off England’s northeast coast. Twice a day, rising tides cut the villagers off from the mainland, and in that breathing space, they have built a society. Among the villagers are Jamie, a hunter played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, his bedridden wife, Isla (Jodie Comer), and their twelve-year-old son, Spike, brought to anxious life by newcomer Alfie Williams. Jamie decides, against the elders advice, that it’s time for Spike’s first mainland hunt, a rite meant to prove he can protect the community. Unsurprisingly, nothing about the day trip goes as planned.
Boyle shot much of the film on iPhone 15 Pro rigs fitted with anamorphic lenses, and the result is a kinetic, overstimulated look. Drone shots dive from cloud level to ankle height, catching the spray of mud as characters sprint through muddy ground.
Even the costumes tell stories. Bow and arrows clash with faded shirts, sketching an accidental timeline of the collapse of Britain. The cinematography that defined 28 Days Later has evolved into something sharper and more colorful, yet still nervy. A nighttime dash across the half-submerged causeway, lit only by the aurora and a storm of crows, is worth the ticket price on its own.
The infected have evolved, too. Classic sprinters still charge like human cheetahs, but Garland adds two more variants. Slow Lows crawl on swollen bellies, slurping earthworms with unsettling acceptance. Alphas are the opposite. They’re colossal, raging brutes who snap heads off torsos and use the severed spines as weapons. One Alpha, played by MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry, feels like a slasher icon in the making. Boyle films its full-frontal sprint with a wicked grin, refusing to cut away from the unsettling nudity or the geysers of arterial spray.
Action sells tickets, yet performance sells the aftermath, and this cast does not waste a drop of blood. Williams nails Spike’s nervous confidence. His voice cracks the moment he is forced to fire an arrow at a charging Alpha. Taylor-Johnson hides a boyish fear with bravado that keeps leaking at the edges. Comer spends much of the film in a haze, but her flashes of lucidity cut through the haze. Isla is diagnosed with cancer, yet every twitch of Comer’s face hints at a lifetime of regrets she may never voice.
Just when the story risks running out of adrenaline, Ralph Fiennes arrives and steals the movie in six scenes. His Dr. Ian Kelson is a hermit who burns bodies at a forest shrine built entirely from bones. Fiennes delivers exposition with the demeanor of a schoolteacher even while boiling the skin off a severed head, and his gentle insistence that the infected deserve dignity turns the expected mad-scientist trope inside out.
The Bone Temple sequence, equal parts Gothic horror and spiritual manifesto, is the film’s moral spine and a strong reminder that Boyle’s apocalypse still has room for grace notes.
Johnnie Burn’s sound design underlines every set piece. The guttural growl of an approaching Alpha is mixed so low it rattles cup holders, while Young Fathers’ fractured art-pop score collides with solemn hymns to create a cracked-choir effect. Boyle has always known how to weaponize a needle drop, and his use of a chirpy eighties pop tune during a gas-station bloodbath is as cheeky as the Lust for Life opener in Trainspotting.
28 Years Later is not without trip-ups. A montage of historical battle footage pasted over a recital of Rudyard Kipling’s war poem “Boots” overexplains Garland’s meditation on cyclical violence. The third act slides into dreamlike hallucination, which could frustrate viewers hoping for cleaner story lines. Most divisive will be the abrupt cliff-hanger that slams to black just. The sequel, already shot, is due next year.
The movie went off the rails a bit with the tracksuit-wearing parkour gang. Still, even the missteps feel like swings for the fences. Garland threads anxieties about isolationism, mercy killing, and generational trauma through the guts without turning the script into a sermon. Spike’s transformation from sheltered island kid to reluctant caregiver would always hit the feeling, even if you swapped the rage infected for a family road trip.
So, is 28 Years Later scary? At times. Is it profound? Not really. Is it perfect? Not even close, but horror rarely thrives on perfection. Boyle chases intensity, texture, and raw humanity, and he nails it two times out of five in nearly every scene.
Screen Rated 