28 Years Later (2025)
28 Years Later marks a return to the franchise for director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, who directed and wrote the original 28 Days Later (2002). It opens during the initial outbreak, where a group of children and their parents are attacked by infected people, who slaughter everybody except for a kid named Jimmy, who escapes.
The story then vaults nearly thirty years ahead and centers on a family living in a quarantined quasi-medieval village in an isolated island off the coast of the still pandemic-ravaged United Kingdom.
The father, Jamie (Aaron-Taylor Johnson) wants to take his 12 year old son, Spike (Alfie Williams) to the British mainland for the first time. The mom, Isla (Jodie Comer) who is suffering from a mysterious illness, protests due to the boy’s young age, but the dad insists that it’s time for him to make his first kill.
They begin their harrowing journey armed only with bows and arrows. The duo encounters numerous infected people along the way, most of whom have shed their clothes.
This part of the movie reminded me of the film The Road (2009), which is also about a father and son traveling through a postapocalyptic world. The dad even looks similar to Viggo Mortensen’s character in that movie.
But Jamie is no hero. His treatment of his son is tantamount to child abuse, and his disregard for his wife drives a wedge between him and Spike.
After a bitter family argument, Spike and his ailing mother travel to the mainland to try to find an eccentric and controversial doctor, Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who Spike hopes can diagnose and cure his mom. That leads to an appropriately macabre climax that takes place amidst a massive structure made of human bones.
An Ambitious And Unique Installment
Alfie Williams is surprisingly believable in the action sequences. Spike experiences one horribly traumatic event after another, but he rarely seems fazed. Normally this would be unrealistic, but this kid has grown up in an environment where his community is literally surrounded by death and carnage. He’s never experienced what we think of as “normal” civilization.
The other standout is Ralph Fiennes, who plays the doctor. Ian keeps us guessing. Is he crazy, a genius, or both? Fiennes is always good and this movie is no exception.
This movie doesn’t have the raw intensity of 28 Years Later or even 28 Weeks Later. The surging terror of the initial outbreak has subsided. It’s more of a postapocalyptic drama than a zombie movie.
I respect that the filmmakers avoided the safe, easy path of repeating the earlier movies, but the slower pace could disappoint people who are looking for the seething chaos of the previous movies.
28 Years Later was always intended to be the beginning of a trilogy (its sequel, The Bone Temple, comes out in 2026), and the ending reflects that. If you’re looking for closure, you’re going to be disappointed.
However, it does set up a potentially intriguing storyline for the upcoming fourth installment, and also ties the contemporary storyline into the prologue flashback.
Rating
28 Years Later is a worthy threequel that avoids simply retreading the same ground as the previous installments, although it lacks some of the visceral intensity of its predecessors.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 7.5
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