28 Years Later (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

More than two decades after they teamed up to freshly spin zombies into modernity in 28 Days Later, Alex Garland and Danny Boyle reunite for another outing in a Rage-infected world. This film -- or at least another installment in what was a fairly simple duology -- has reportedly endured development hell since 2007, due to conflicts over franchise rights and studio finances after the relative successes of 28 Weeks Later, which included minimal input from its original creators. While this series was groundbreaking in a lot of ways, including setting a visual tone consciously adopted by The Walking Dead in 2010, rewatching the first two now is something of a frustrating experience, boring one to distraction with their very-of-the-time shaky and grainy cinematography, frenetic editing, and simplistic plot. 

After a highly effective and chilling theatrical trailer for 28 Years Later was released, featuring Taylor Holmes's haunting recording of Kipling's "Boots," I was excited to revisit Garland and Boyle's vision of a world long-since cannibalized by the Rage Virus and its undead infected. There was something raw and riveting in their vision of apocalypse in the years before zombies had their renaissance, and now that zombies are somewhat dull again, I hoped for a spark of ingenuity. Boyle, like him or not, usually provides that spark. In our age of reboots, requels, and remakes, I expected endless Easter eggs and IP throwbacks and legacy characters, and I was willing to accept them. Thankfully, Garland and Boyle zig instead of zag, and here provide a mostly original story that does none of the things we expect franchise installments to do.

Opening with a terrifying scene of children in Scotland during the outbreak of the virus as they watch Teletubbies before being slaughtered, the film announces itself with a fury matching that of its monstrous antagonists. We're then launched into the present by onscreen text, much like the previous two films, and moved from London to a remote Northumberland locale called Holy Island, accessible only by a sandbar at low tide, effectively quarantining a small town of survivors. Adolescent boy Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams) is taught to be a man early in this dangerous world by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who takes him across the water to the mainland to hunt his first zombie and become a man. Spike, who idolizes his father, learns quickly (along with us) how the world has changed in the years since civilization collapsed. The worldbuilding is familiar and a bit disappointing to anyone familiar with zombie fiction, but Boyle and his designers include some really cool ideas about society and religion among the survivors that provide chilling discomfort in the in-town scenes, especially when Spike and Jamie return to celebrate their success in a wild, drunken party.

As much as the human survivors seem to have devolved into a new Dark Age of pseudo-religious dogma and celebrated violence, the infected seem to have evolved in their own way. Mostly without clothes, some have become bloated and obese, crawling and rolling around to eat anything they can, while others have a twitchy, manic energy that allows them to sprint and chase their prey tirelessly. Too, "alphas" have sprung up, seemingly more intelligent and commanding hordes of sprinters like warlords in a wasteland. There's even a curious suggestion that they might have some influence over nature, as rats and crows amass near them and move in concert a la Dracula, though the precise connection is never made explicit. One alpha in particular, nicknamed Samson, lives nearby and interrupts Spike's hunt, leading Jamie to intervene and hurry his son back to their home sanctuary. Samson's huge and has a notably distracting penis, which elicited more than a few chuckles in our screening, and while his physically threatening presence is indeed scary, I found it annoyingly curious that his supposed intelligence hasn't yet induced him to traverse the sandbar before this incident. If he's truly been in this region for many years (as another character claims later in the film), how is this the first time he's seen others make the mad dash and not thought, "Hmm, I can do that, too"?

Spike's coming-of-age celebration -- which we know to be a sham, despite Jamie's claims not to have helped during the hunt -- ends with a horrible revelation: Jamie is cheating on his mentally debilitated wife Isla (Jodie Comer, doing everything she can with a mostly thankless role) with the town schoolteacher. A furious Spike confronts his father, who viciously backhands him, provoking Spike to burn a barn and, during the chaos, flee with his mother to the wilderness. He plans to seek out Dr. Kelson, a mysterious hermit and recluse, who Spike hopes can aid his ailing mother; the relatively untested Spike deems himself her caretaker and foolishly thinks he can protect them both en route, despite knowing nothing of Kelson except his father's warnings of madness and a vague location based on a campfire they saw in the distance while hunting. At least we know Spike comes by his hubris honestly.

Their journey is fraught with peril, taking on a sort of Odyssey homage or even a Wizard of Oz-esque road trip to the enigmatic medicine man. They are joined by a young man (Edvin Ryding), apparently a NATO solider from Sweden, whose frustrated and anxious antics allow for most of the film's humor. They encounter a pregnant zombie and, in what may be the film's most memorable scene, deliver her baby; later, they continue to care for the baby and constantly claim it's free of the virus, which is such a patently foolish and impossible-to-determine claim that I bit my tongue to stop shouting at them, "You don't know that!" Motherhood might seem to take over as a theme from failed fatherhood here, but apart from Spike himself arguably "mothering" his own mother and the non-zombie zombie baby, the film doesn't really explore it with any depth.

Indeed, I'm not sure at all what the theme of this film might be. Despite violent, morally ambiguous militarization being a theme of 28 Weeks Later, and the presence of the soldier here, that isn't really expanded upon here. And all the cultlike religiosity on display in both Spike's village and Dr. Kelson's outpost is clearly objectified by the camera but almost conspicuously ignored by the screenplay. Speaking of which: Dr. Kelson is played by an electrifying Ralph Fiennes in a setting clearly meant to be iconographic of this film and its upcoming sequel. Fiennes reminded me of Brando in Apocalypse Now, and he clearly intends to; obviously mad yet chillingly calm, he paces among pillars of bones (from thousands of corpses, surely) and lives almost as one with them, though the film offers no clarity as to how he has survived, what his bone temple means (beyond memento mori), or why, despite a mysterious nerve agent he can shoot to temporarily disable the infected, he doesn't simply eliminate the infected (especially Samson, who he has named himself, apparently knows with great familiarity, and is very nearly killed by).

Other than these annoyingly large plot holes and illogical thematic concerns, my other complaint in this film is its absurd, insane ending that in no way fits the film preceding it. Seemingly, Jack O'Connell's character is the sole kid who survived the opening scene's bloodbath 28 years earlier, so we can imagine more of his story will be fleshed out in the upcoming sequel from Nia DaCosta, but the sudden tonal shift with these new characters in some kind of wacky, thickly stylized cult of parkour thugs throws the entire movie into a mess before it suddenly and unceremoniously ends. I hated the ending so much I would have walked out of the cinema if it hadn't ended so quickly. From the upset outcries in the auditorium, it sounded like most people didn't like it. Surely we'll understand more in January when The Bone Temple is released, but it's a profoundly weird and unwelcome denouement to what was an otherwise somber and morose character drama.

I'm glad Boyle and Garland don't rely on prior knowledge of the series in order to entertain us, and the relief from needing footnotes or extensive "ending explained" videos on YouTube is considerable. There aren't callbacks and returning characters and expansive lore to be found here, and that makes this film unique in our present climate. Its climax, in which Kelson has to teach Spike -- and the audience -- about the importance of respecting and sanctifying death, is remarkably poignant. I only wish the film had focused more on this conceit, even with its hallucinatory editing and dreamlike segues, and less on material specifics that never come to fruition.