Danny Boyle's Zombie Sequel '28 Years Later' Lands D.O.A.

Not to cast the suits at a movie studio as arbiters of taste (heaven forbid) but try as I might I can’t figure out how after all these many years Danny Boyle managed to sell the studio on this version of 28 Years Later that’s hitting theaters this weekend. Was the familiarity of the title simply enough? And with that, they just let him and writer Alex Garland do whatever the hell they wanted, as long as they could slap that sellable title onto it? Normally, one would consider such artistic freedom a good thing. The dream! Just think of the magic that certain talented young filmmakers were able to smuggle out from the looseness of Corman-esque systems of moviemaking.

But 28 Years Later tests those limits, delivering a discombobulated mess. Save for some scattered fun deranged bits, and an impressive extravagance in its visuals and editing, this movie has me contemplating the benefits of creative constraints. Sometimes reins are good. Sometimes railings are there to keep us from flying off a cliff.

The first in a pre-planned trilogy, I’ll also admit it’s difficult to gauge the product on hand, as is. Perhaps this will all come together into something meaningful and emotionally moving two whole movies from now? That’s not an unfamiliar issue for a critic to deal with in 2025, where TV and Cinema have in many ways melded into one continuous loop of Cinematic Universes—stories without end. 28 Years Later itself lands its closing moments on if not exactly a cliffhanger, then the brand new start of a fresh next chapter. Never mind that it’s one so tonally inconsistent with everything we’ve just witnessed for two full hours—imagining what the next movie could look like does feel sorta sporting thanks to the WTF of it. I suppose that’s the hook then, to keep on keeping on, because the two muddled and unscary hours before that bonkers swerve of an ending weren’t giving me very much cause to care as I was about to walk out of the theater.

Truth in advertising does at least extend to the film’s title, though, because sure enough 28 Years Later begins its story 28 years after the events of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s genre-changing 2002 zombie classic 28 Days Later. (And hey, remember when people would get really angry if you called these bloodthirsty villains “zombies” since they’re not actually the undead but rather people infected with the “rage virus”? I look forward to revitalizing that conversation.)

With shades of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, the entire island of Britain has found itself quarantined, as the aforementioned rage virus has been contained world-wide to just there—and one supposes a point about Brexit might be made some time in the trilogy, but it’s just background noise here. Surrounded by international vessels that relentlessly patrol its waters, all and any survivors within its borders have been left to fend for themselves. Small communities have managed to thrive, though, and one such lives on an island off the coast of Scotland, connected to the mainland by a thin strip of causeway that’s only crossable at low tide. (We do love a Woman in Black reference.) The townspeople have retreated to a Medievalish lifestyle of just the basics—the camera scans down a school wall illustrating the handful of roles (seamstress, hunter) that are available to every person in this society—but they’re managing. They seem to be getting by fine, really. Save the cold public communal showers, anyway, which, no, thank you.

One of the practices these survivors have come up with over the years is sending their young people off on a rite-of-passage journey to the mainland where they’re forced to face and slaughter for the first time some of the infected—a Rumspringa of Rage, if you will. That’s where we meet 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), son of Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer). At 12, he’s a little young to be making his first killing trip, but he’s gung-ho to go and so’s his Da, who’ll be joining him (they’re not cruel enough to make the kids go by themselves, thankfully).

Spike’s mum, on the other hand, is a bedridden basket-case—not from nerves really, but from some undiagnosed mental or physical condition (it’s really unclear for most of the movie) that’s only worsening with time. Since there are no doctors on the island Jamie and Spike keep her squirreled away, indulging her fits in the moments when she’s briefly awake. We watch her in one such moment of clarity rage against the idea of sending her baby off to the middle of monster-ville, but that passes quickly, clearing the way for the menfolk to set off on their manly little quest.

But what will they be facing? Garland’s script has some fun imagining all of that. In the nearly three decades since first infection, the virus has mutated its victims into three camps, it seems, scientifically chalked up to an imbalance of hormones. There are obese slug-like people who squirm along the ground, eating worms. (And yes, I felt seen.) There are still plenty of the running wild infected that we recognize from the first film and its (terrific) sequel. Then there are the Alphas—the inevitable eXXXtreme upgrade! Smarter, stronger, faster than the original brand—the rage-fueled Red Bull to old-school Coca-Cola. You know how the Jurassic Park movies keep introducing newfangled bigger badder dinosaurs with each round because somebody decided a T-Rex isn’t scary enough anymore? It’s very that.

It also needs to be pointed out that another physical trait these Alphas seem to share is the massive dong gene, something Boyle’s cameras can’t seem to get enough of. Once a reliable totem for teenage giggles, all the exposed dick here instead reads as a big swinging symbol of loosed violence. And that makes sense in a franchise that’s had notions of Toxic Masculinity baked into it since its beginnings—that the threat of horse-cock would loom (dare I say) large. Even Aaron Taylor-Johnson can’t compete with those mofos.

That’s all setup for the first third of this extremely messy movie. For all the build-up of that causeway being difficult to cross, these characters sure do come and go back and forth across it a lot. (The best scene in the film actually involves one such night-time crossing, where the absence of electricity in this place turns the sky into a gorgeous purple galaxy painting straight off the side of a stoner’s van in the 1970s. Beautiful stuff.) Spike will eventually make two journeys onto the mainland, with the second half of the film centering around his sick mother. And each of these journeys will seem different as night from day. He’ll meet strange new people. Alternating lessons about Life and Death will present themselves to the boy. You could even try to attach a sort of dreamy bildungsroman a la Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter to all of this, if any of it felt in any way coherent or managed to find some kind of point by its end anyway.

Eventually, Ralph Fiennes sweeps in, having a grand ol’ time at high Shakespearean register slathered head to toe in iodine and building his own little temples of doom—and sure, why not? That’s the stuff of proper unhinged cinema. He livens up the dreary mother-son dynamic at least, which had me, at this point, feeling like a cold fish. You know that thing where you can feel a movie straining for an emotional wallop, but you find yourself sitting far outside of it, feeling nothing? That was me for Comer’s entire arc—I never got any sense of who Isla is supposed to be outside of an archetype, all mood swings and spaced-eyed monologues, so my heartstrings remained thoroughly unplucked by the plot’s conspicuous schematics. What bland ideas of Mum-hood. One feels as if Garland came up with her name and decided that was the extent of her character. (The man’s attraction to blunt symbolism remains unwavering.)

Again I’m forced to admit all of this could, I suppose, come to an interesting head two films from now—perhaps I’ll rue my callous indifference to these characters come this new trilogy’s completion. I have such doubts though, since the cinematic epics it’s nodding toward—the Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games movies both feel deeply influential here (which should also give you a sense of how merely horror-adjacent this movie is)—had me fully locked and loaded into caring about an army of characters by the credits-roll of their first chapters. 28 Years Later couldn’t even get me to care about this small family of three. It has a surplus of ideas raging about, but no discernible containment system. It’s just some pretty, chaotic nonsense.