28 Years Later Review: A Hopeful Zombie Movie?

Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic

There are not many directors who can claim that a movie they made was a genre game changer, but Danny Boyle can make that claim with 2002’s 28 Days Later, upending zombie movies with his fast zombies. Neither Boyle nor his frequent writer and collaborator Alex Garland had a direct hand in the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, in 2007, but both are back for the first entry of a planned trilogy, 28 Years Later. 

As the title indicates, it has been 28 years since the rage virus infection spread throughout England, which is now quarantined from the rest of the world indefinitely. Survivor communities exist, but do not thrive. One such community lives on an island accessible only from the mainland when the tide is low. 

Here, we are introduced to 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), a boy who is about to explore the mainland with his dad, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), for the first time. His mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), is bedridden with an ailment, unknown due to a lack of doctors. Spike’s first venture onto the mainland is an eye-opening and frightening learning experience. Over 28 years, the virus has mutated, creating crawlers that move slowly and crawl, as well as Alphas that control hordes of infection and exhibit extreme strength. The 28 years have also changed the people who have managed to survive, as embodied by the mysterious Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a former doctor who lives by himself deep in the woods and is rumored to have gone mad. 

28 Years Later is a very unconventional zombie movie. The zombies take a significant back seat to the humans in the story, with the primary focus being on Spike as the film's main character. There may be some concern about making a child actor the center of a big-budget horror movie and a planned trilogy, but anyone who has seen Millions should know that Danny Boyle can be trusted to cast a promising young talent and get a good performance out of a kid. Alfie Williams, in his first major role, nails it. 

In many ways, this is a coming-of-age story in the vein of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, showing Spike’s first steps into a bigger world. Cooped up his entire life on the island, this venture out into the wilds of the great unknown is his first step into becoming a man. At the beginning of the film, we see him start to pack a toy, think better of it, and leave it in his bedroom. 

Leaving the island for the mainland is eye-opening in several ways. The community he is a part of is well-detailed by the film, and an effective job is done establishing how they’ve survived and how well fortified they are. But Spike’s journey beyond his comfortable walls also reveals that his idyllic home is not exactly what he’s grown up being told it is, which plants some doubt and disillusionment in his mind. There are also strains in the father-son relationship, and his devotion to his mom pushes him to extreme measures.

As Spike’s father, the film presents Jaime as a good father, but a flawed human being. And being on the cusp of being a teenager, Spike is of that age where many kids start to see, for the first time, the flaws in people, their parents, whom they used to put on a pedestal. Jaime takes pride in his son, insisting that Spike is old enough to go out into the mainland, despite being two to two to three years too young by the usual standards of the community elders. There’s a nice establishing moment early on where Jaime insists on Spike getting the bacon he has found and cooked for breakfast, a rare treat. But his wife’s sickness puts a strain on their relationship, which Spike and the audience glimpse early on when he slouches his shoulders before steeling himself to go upstairs and deal with her screaming in pain.

If the film's first half focuses on the relationship between father and son, the second half is on the mother-son relationship. Comer manages to pull off the difficult task of being sympathetic despite wild, unexplained mood swings, seemingly capable of going from tender to vulgar to in excruciating pain at any moment.

Spike’s love for his mother leads him to an extreme quest to seek out Fiennes’ Dr. Kelson, despite the rumors that he is mad. Fiennes is one of the preeminent actors of his time, and he brings a very unexpected value to the horrors of this world. To go into more detail would be to give away some significant third-act spoilers. 

The evolution of the variations of zombies is not something I was sold on right away, but it came to make sense in the grand scheme of things. I don’t think the crawlers bring much to the table, but the alphas definitely change the game. There are still some quality thrills and anxiety-inducing moments with all the variations of zombies, though, and some surprising gross-out gags, including a very bold moment involving a pregnant zombie. Boyle and Garland hold back from nothing in presenting this as an unrelenting world, with an opening scene of children huddling in a room watching Teletubbies, and becoming increasingly scared as they hear panicked adults outside their room.

Many horror movies, especially of the zombie variety, are often allegorical, perhaps most famously with George A. Romeo’s Dawn of the Dead being a commentary on mindless consumerism. Boyle’s film is surprisingly hopeful rather than pessimistic. The Latin phrase memento mori is invoked, which means, “Remember you must die.” It’s not presented as a bad thing, but in a way of honoring the dead and having a more well-rounded view of life. Even the zombies eventually die, and they were once human. As a character says, there are many ways to die, some better than others. I found this aspect of the story quite emotionally stimulating, not what I expected from a zombie movie, a flickering candle of humanity in an increasingly inhumane world. 

This is also a very, very British film. The film's opening scene eventually returns with the tag at the very end, setting the stage for the next film in the series, which is apparently due for release in 2026 after being filmed back-to-back with this one.

There are also a lot of cross-cuts of old British war imagery and a recitation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Boots,” which was featured prominently in the trailers. It feels like a lot of cultural subtext that sometimes threatens to become too distracting an artistic flourish. Still, it doesn’t detract from the film's overall enjoyment and is not integral to understanding or enjoying the film.

It’s also worth noting that the tag at the end of the film is like a missile from left field, a very different tonal shift from everything that has come before it. It sets the stage for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple to bring a whole new element of bonkers to the proceedings in 2026.

I had cautiously optimistic hope for this movie. Boyle is a director who is not afraid to do bold things, either in his storytelling or in his cinematic style (the digital filming of 28 Days Later has poorly aged). Garland has made a name for himself in the last decade apart from Boyle. Having the two of them collaborating again is a welcome return for the franchise. A game cast, a solid story, and enough scares and gore are enough to recommend it. I’m curious to see where they go with the future two installments of this planned trilogy.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars