It’s thrilling when there’s a quantum leap in genre filmmaking, when a director lights hoary old tropes on fire and charges forth with something new. Back in the day, zombie movies nearly all aped the work George Romero did with Night of the Living Dead. Romero laid out all the rules. The zombies were slow, the survivors went at each other hard, there was always one guy who was bitten and refused to tell anyone until it was too late, you know the deal. For years, that’s just how it was.

2002’s 28 Days Later changed things in a big way. The team of director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland did more than make zombies fast. They created a digital aesthetic that merged high-octane horror with moments of subdued beauty. They also created a vibe, in a way. During the COVID lockdowns and the news footage of empty streets, I can’t count the number of times I saw people comment, “This looks like something out of 28 Days Later.”

That film was followed by 28 Weeks Later, which had no involvement from Garland and minimal involvement from Boyle.* It was fun, and it didn’t reinvent the wheel the way the original did. Is it possible to do something new with the genre again? Can that be done within the same genre? Can the same team do that? Yes, to all of the above. Because as much as 2025 is a horror show, actual horror movies are having a damn good year. Exhibit A is Sinners. Exhibit B is the long-gestating 28 Years Later.

For nearly thirty years, the Rage virus spread throughout Europe. Startlingly virulent and contagious, it claimed its victims within seconds. The infected regressed to a state of hyper-violence. The virus rampaged through England, and made its way to the European mainland before it was beaten back. When we re-enter this world, Rage has been effectively contained to England. Most of the U.K.’s population is dead. What’s left of the infected roam what’s left of the country, along with people who have become…strange.

Survivors have had to become creative. A group of them on the Northumberland isle of Holy Island have found an effective strategy. The only way to and from the mainland is a causeway, one only usable during low tide. In their way, the islanders thrive. One of them is Spike (Alfie Williams). He’s a smart twelve-year-old who idolizes his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and worries about his mother Isla (Jodie Comer). More frequently, Isla is confined to bed, hallucinates, drifts in and out of reality.

It’s a problem, but the more immediate concern is Spike’s coming of age ceremony. At fourteen or fifteen, boys** journey to the mainland with their fathers. They must become comfortable with killing, and Spike is tasked with killing an infected, the first of many. On their journey through a dark forest, the son and father encounter different kinds of infected. Perhaps the worst of all are Alphas. One of them is Samson, and he’s larger, stronger, smarter.  They also see signs of an active fire in the distance. Jamie tells Spike it’s likely the home of the mysterious Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a doctor shrouded in legend.

Only barely, Spike and Jamie escape a marauding horde of infected and make it back to Holy Island. What Spike has done and seen has changed him. He changes more when he discovers that his father is just a man. It all forces a decision. Spike will go back to the mainland. He’ll take Isla, find Kelson, and perhaps the doctor can cure what ails her. Spike is a brave boy. Yet he lives in a world that feeds brave boys into a meat grinder. 

Danny Boyle has returned to the 28 Days Later franchise to direct this installment. I’ll allow for recency bias, but 28 Years Later is not only a better film than the very good original, but also operates on a level comparable to Sinners.*** Boyle shot the film with a combination of drones, digital action cameras, and an iPhone 15 Max. It sometimes has a gritty feel similar to the original, though Boyle works on a larger canvas. There are moments of quiet beauty found in the sprawling forests and crumbling towns. When the action does hit, it has a grotesque power. The film also has a series of dizzying tonal shifts that, in retrospect, are totally logical. It dips into zombie horror, YA adventure, psychological drama, along with religious awe and a sprinkling of folk/cult horror. 

It’s common for sequels to stick to the idea of, “Do the same as the original, but bigger and more.” Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland certainly widen the aperture. We see new kinds of infected (Pregnant infected?), along with the howling sprinters we’ve come to love. The script’s focus isn’t solely on infected-related carnage. There’s a recurring theme of memento mori – the ancient idea of, “Remember, you must die.” We see the characters dealing with death, or not dealing with it, in highly individual ways. That tells us what they prioritize and how they respond to life itself. While Garland can be somewhat divisive with his work,**** here he effectively merges genre thrills with the memento mori theme. I’m still stunned that a zombie movie has a third act sequence so profound and emotional, I wept in the theater.

The cast understood the assignment, and they ran with it. Alfie Williams’ Spike is the lead, and his performance is smart and sensitive. When we meet him, he loves his mother, idolizes his father, and is less than enthusiastic about learning to kill the infected. He’s still a child in many ways, and the decisions he makes are often childish and intelligent. Watch how Williams carries himself, though. As the film progresses and as he learns certain things, he hardens and becomes confident. The cost of that confidence is steep, and Williams shares every agonizing step with us. It’s also smart that the supporting characters exist to broaden or change Spike’s perspective on the world. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie is boisterous, swaggers more than a little, and uses it all as a shield for his pain. Jodie Comer’s Isla is nearly the opposite. Her pain, physical and mental, is always out in the open. She knows it, and wants to be there for her family, but what’s happening to her is overwhelming. The quiet scene stealer of the film is Ralph Fiennes as Kelson. Is Kelson deranged? Possibly. His derangement isn’t dangerous, not to others, anyway, and his behavior comes from a deep well of compassion. 

28 Years Later is more than the beginning of a new trilogy. It’s more than a legacy sequel, it’s one of the best legacy sequels to yet exist. Usually, those terms would fill me with nausea and dread. Not here. It may be bigger and might build on the original, yet it introduces ideas and setpieces that feel revolutionary. 28 Years Later has the raw power of one of its alphas, and the pure emotion of the person it once was.

*The fact that there was no 28 Months Later is one of the great cinematic mysteries.

**To be honest, I think the ceremony is confined to boys only, though perhaps I missed something. It begs the question, if the islanders have reverted to a patriarchal society, what kind of coming of age ceremony do girls have?

***To have two films (so far) this year made with that degree of craft is fantastic.

****I’m looking at you, Men.

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.