Film Review - 28 Years Later (2025)

Danny Boyle’s return to horror is a masterstroke

When 28 Days Later came out in 2002, it didn’t reinvent the genre, but it gave soul to an otherwise soul-less world.

Before 2002, zombie films largely belonged to the classic Romero entries that defined the genre, with reanimated corpses returning to bite the living in Night of the Living Dead (1968), followed by Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). My personal favourite was Dawn of the Dead, which introduced the zombie apocalypse as a narrative setting. That theme would eventually become a genre of its own and give us gems like Train to Busan, World War Z, Shaun of the Dead, and, in the TV, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead and Black Summer.

But it was the 2002 gem 28 Days Later that brought us fast zombies with a sense of urgency and terror, and more importantly, it shifted the focus toward how people deal with a deadly pandemic when even their own friends and family become threats to their survival.

Director Danny Boyle has always been something of a maverick. He’s been vocal about his dislike for the studio system and you can feel that in his work. His films crackle with kinetic energy: quick cuts, dynamic camera angles and pulse-pounding soundtracks that keep you on edge. He often blends high-end and cheap camera gear, which lets him deliver premium-looking films on modest budgets. You can see this technique throughout Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Trance and even in episodes of Pistol and Trust that he directed for television.

28 Years Later feels like the organic next step for Boyle, now teaming up once again with longtime collaborator Alex Garland (known for Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War). The story picks up nearly three decades after the original outbreak, following 13-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), born on a remote Scottish island where a tight-knit community has survived in seclusion. A single walkway connects the island to the mainland, but it disappears under the tide for most of the day, leaving only a four-hour window to venture out to mainland and return safely.

That mainland is the UK, which has been ravaged by the virus and cut off from the rest of the world. The global population managed to quarantine Britain and move on. Not so for those still inside.

To survive, the islanders have returned to a near-medieval existence. Everyone has a role. The village is surrounded by wooden barricades, there’s a tavern-like gathering space, and their weapons are bows, arrows and spears. Children must learn how to survive early and that includes Spike, who travels to the mainland for the first time, guided by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), to make his first kill.

But 28 years is a long time and the infected have evolved too. Where once it was assumed the disease would burn out as the infected starved, something else happened. The infected adapted. Some became scavengers, others more like vegetarians. A few evolved into towering, berserker-like monsters that are nearly impossible to kill.

This is the world Spike is growing up in, a world where the concept of 'normal' has long since been redefined. And that’s really what the film is about: a boy forced to grow up in a brutal, broken reality. What makes the film truly great is its emotional core. Spike is not just navigating a post-pandemic landscape; he’s also dealing with a sick mother (Jodie Comer) and a father who seems to have emotionally checked out. The world is shaping him and not gently.

Beyond the world-building, what grounds this film are the emotional truths. Characters wrestle with loyalty, sacrifice, honesty and the erosion of trust in an impossible world. Instead of focusing on a world after the pandemic (something we are all too familiar with), the film zooms in on the beauty of the human nature surviving within its dying world.

This perfectly delivered horror stands on its own, but if we want to call it a sequel, then it belongs among the best in cinematic history, right next to Terminator 2, Aliens and The Godfather Part II. Never mind the zombies, look to the characters to find the soul of this film. Instead of focusing on a world after the pandemic (something we are all too familiar with), the film zooms in on the beauty of human nature surviving within its dying world.

And after an ending like that, there’s really nothing more to say.