28 YEARS LATER (2025)

It’s been 28 years since the accidental release of the Rage Virus in director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s 28 Days universe—a disease borne from the ingenuity of scientists driven by man’s unconscious desire for progression and dominance over at Cambridge Prima Research Centre in Cambridge, England. 

“If someone gets infected, you’ve got between ten and twenty seconds to kill them.”—Selena in 28 Days Later.

The infection spreads via the transfer of blood and saliva, and quickly, as a single drop of these highly contagious fluids is enough to infect an individual if said fluid enters any bodily orifice. Once infected, the victim may experience involuntary and painful convulsions as the virus begins to take over their nervous system before bleeding from their eyes and mouth.

The manner in which the virus spreads can occur via a bite—a more traditional means used in films since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968)—as well as the creative approach of an infected person pinning down an individual and puking blood on their face or into their mouth to guarantee the infection’s spread. I’ve always been enamoured by the latter approach, as it emulates how a virus operates, but in a more advanced fashion.

A virus infects its host’s cells with proteins to create copies of itself from the inside of the cell’s body. When maturation is reached, the cell bursts open, flooding the body with copies of the virus that continue onwards towards other healthy cells to repeat this process of replication. The virus can even cause symptoms for the host—symptoms that release excess copies of itself into the air so as to spread itself to other potential hosts within a certain radius.

The Rage Virus acts in a similar manner, giving its host symptoms of highly increased aggression and what appears to be a loss of consciousness, becoming more animal-like; however, the virus’s means of spreading itself to other potential hosts isn’t via breathable droplets of mucus from a sneeze or cough. Instead, the virus influences its host to actively pursue its victim, spreading itself via saliva and sanguine vomit—an evolution of obligate intracellular parasitic design. This approach to fictionalised virology is understated, which is a testament to Garland’s creativity in his earlier age—a gift I wish he retained post-Ex Machina (2015).

28 Days Later (2002) ended with a glimmer of hope surrounded by overwhelming uncertainty of what may become of the rest of the world—an ending I was fine with leaving the narrative and its premise at. I was open to seeing it continue elsewhere, but only if done properly. Unfortunately, its sequel, 28 Weeks Later (2007), continued this premise without Boyle and Garland at the helm and failed to live up to the first film’s quality and ingenuity, falling into the practice of employing genre-specific contrivances to artificially push its narrative forward and create tension and scares with characters I couldn’t care less about.

That brings us to 28 Years Later, the third film in the saga, which reunites dynamic duo Boyle and Garland to pick up where the infection left off. Although I wouldn’t call myself a fan of 28 Days Later, I did like a lot of what was in the film: the ingenuity of the Rage Virus; its horror video game-inspired fixed, dynamic camera angles; its use of then-state-of-the-art digital cameras to give the image a grittiness celluloid couldn’t capture; and the peak of Boyle’s frenetic editing to evoke immeasurable amounts of tension, dread, and unfiltered horror.

I was excited to see what the two would achieve with 28 Years Later, especially since Garland could focus just on the screenplay, allowing his authorial creativity to flourish. Will they explore how far the Rage Virus has spread throughout the world? If so, will it spread across the UK, into Northern Europe, and the Mediterranean? Will it even reach the US? If its reach is that vast, how would each country handle the infection?

According to the field of virology, when a virus spreads from host to host, it mutates to coexist within them to fulfil its sole purpose of replication. When it does mutate, the virus can become less harmful as it becomes more virulent. With this in mind, if the Rage Virus mutates in a similar fashion, will the waning of its symptoms cause those who are infected to retain their consciousness but still be at the mercy of the virus’s evolutionary parasitic leaning nature?

There are a lot of questions that can be asked regarding the direction in which Garland could choose to take this film; however, none of the possibilities I mentioned are explored outside of the reach of its infection. In fact, 28 Years Later is unfocused in regard to Garland’s ability to write where he wants the film’s narrative, characterisations, and world-building to go. To make matters worse, Garland’s lack of focus in writing is matched by Boyle’s frenetic “avant-garde”editing choices, making my viewing experience hurt more than it should.

28 Years Later opens 28 years prior to this film’s setting, with the reach of the first wave of infection stretching as far as Scotland. A small village’s children are gathered in a single household while the remaining adults scurry about, attempting to figure out what to do next, until absurdity comes to their doorstep, breaks in, and consumes nearly every man, woman, and child while the children’s show Teletubbies is playing in the background. A lone survivor—a small boy—manages to escape the newly infected house and heads towards the local church seeking asylum, only to then watch his father (the community’s Catholic priest) willingly get consumed by the infected, as he perceives this absurd horror as an act of the eternal.

The introduction to 28 Years Later is done in a similar manner as both Days and Weeks in that we’re thrown right into the fray, and our exposure to such ultra-violent indifference immediately grabs an audience’s attention and hooks them into the film’s world; I know I was hooked from the jump. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as impressed with 28 Years Later’s intro in contrast to the prior two films, as it was less effective at portraying such cold and horrific indifference due entirely to its editing.

The editing is indicative of the energy Boyle employs in both Trainspotting (1996) and 28 Days Later, using quick cuts to facilitate tension and anxiety-inducing emotional evocation. However, in these earlier films, the editing is calculated; Boyle knew when to do it, how to do it, and how long to do it. That’s not the case in 28 Years Later.

Jon Harris is completely unhinged with his editing decisions, like a mad dog off the chain. Cuts jump from one to another for the entirety of the introduction and portions of the remainder of the movie. Moments of suspense, where some fragment of time needs to be spent to elicit the proper emotional response, happen in half the time it takes one to blink; moments where the infected get their hands on the unaffected don’t focus on the sheer brutality and physical prowess of the infected and transpire as quickly as the moments of suspense do.

There’s a sense of urgency throughout the opening, but no feelings of tension and dread to pair with it. Moments come as quickly as they go, and whatever interesting and visually exciting dynamic camera angles and compositions are used, Boyle never allows them to exist for more than a second. How’s one supposed to appreciate skilful camera work intended to make me feel profound fear if I’m not allowed to take it in? This is a whole new extreme in frenetic energy for Boyle as a filmmaker, and I’m not one for it.

In 28 Days Later, Boyle paints moments of horror in quick and constant succession, yet he allows enough time for the scene to breathe, even momentarily. Boyle allows audiences to recognise and absorb the selected environment and how much or how little space exists within it; the angle and placement of the camera; and how it uses elements of its environment at the position and angle the camera is currently in to skilfully frame the shot. This approach facilitates a voyeuristic perspective where the viewer can peer into a microcosm on the brink of collapse—a space that is highly familiar while something incomprehensible hunts down our kind, thus creating a space in which the fear of the unknown can thrive.

Unfortunately, Boyle seems to have lost all interest in cultivating the proper emotional response necessary for making a horror movie, especially his visual direction. His approach in portraying moments of brutality in 28 Years Later is bogged down by the addition of an intrusive avant-garde visual styling that’s applied in such an unrealistic manner that it runs contrary to its genre classification.

For example, there are moments during the opening, as well as the first half of the 28 Years Later, where the subjects in frame are doubled, presenting parts of their physicality in a mirrored fashion on the other side of the shot, similar to a kaleidoscope effect, only more tame. These moments can occur whenever someone’s jumped by an infected person as they’re trying to escape danger or when someone’s surveying the inside of a home for signs of a threat.

What should be used as a time to build suspense or smack someone across the face with absurdity is instead interrupted by uncalculated visual flair. This exemplary moment, and moments that align with it later in the film’s runtime, such as Boyle’s repetitive practice in which he captures the death of the infected with 20 individual iPhones over and over again until it loses its lustre half-an-hour into the film, or presenting moments of the film’s today with moments outside of its existence, whether temporal or nocturnal, in a style that heavily mimics the music video-style approach Rob Zombie employed in his film debut, House of 1000 Corpses (2003), come off more as an artistic hiccup rather than artistic ingenuity.

This avant-dissonance gave me the impression that Boyle approached the visual direction of 28 Years Later akin to how a bored middle school student would when creating work for his digital art class: clicking aimlessly, sticking with effects that look “cool” in isolation, and applying them to random parts of their assignment versus doing something pragmatic towards the nature of their design. It’s amateurish, frankly, and embarrassing for someone who used to have a foothold on avant-garde practices in contemporary cinema.

I first assumed that Boyle wanted to capture the same feelings of dread and terror from 28 Days Later with this approach, but that opinion is long gone. His approach is overdone and aimless, juxtaposing how he used to handle said cinematic elements in his earlier films. This failure to emulate what once was wasn’t a failure at all; rather, it was a conscious decision. But why? Why forgo his original approach in favour of what is used currently?

It may be due to the effect short media has had on the general populace; how videos on TikTok, YouTube, and suchlike, are edited to stimulate dopamine to grab a viewer’s attention. The practices of the medium are slowly withering in this age of mukbangs, influencers, and pseudo-intellectuals. Certain films abuse triangular compositions and quick cuts more frequently to emulate the same style of filming and editing as those who the youth aspire to be nowadays, as they believe that this familiarity will garner more ticket sales.

Whatever Boyle’s rationale was, I was constantly removed from 28 Years Later on account of the relentless torrent of fast cutting, as well as its “avant-garde” visual direction, that ate away at my eyes and my tolerance, though that wasn’t the only thing that was eating away at me.

My issues with this film extend towards Garland’s approach to writing the narrative, characters, and world-building, as it’s as unfocused and unpragmatic as Boyle’s editing. The early portions of the film primarily focus on Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his son Spike (Alfie Williams), as the latter undergoes a cultural initiation into adulthood by hunting the infected on the mainland. During this time, Garland provides some world-building, and to be honest, these moments are among the strongest in the film.

The main reason to make a sequel to 28 Days Later and title it 28 Years Later is to show how much the world has changed due to the inception and spread of the Rage Virus, so seeing survivors living off the coast of Northumberland, England, becoming self-sufficient, and developing a social culture around the newly developed world is exactly what should be focused on while developing characters that we should care about.

Children attend school to learn soft skills, the roles people play within the island, and the dynamics of the world and the infected. Outside of school, they learn to hunt both wildlife and the infected from their parents—the father figure in Spike’s case. Upon completing their journey to maturity, the island holds a celebration filled with food, drink, and merriment.

During this bit of world-building, we’re given a peek into Spike’s life, which is filled with uncertainty, as his mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), has been ill with some unknown illness and his father, Jamie, struggles with taking care of her, giving the impression that she has been sick for some time now. This bit of information comes full circle back to 28 Years Later’s world-building in that, due to the effects that the Rage Virus has had on the world, access to the advances in medical technology has seemingly been nulled.

This small island off the coast of England lacks the proper bodies and financial resources to have a hospital with the appropriate technology and staff to treat illnesses that exist beyond the common cold or physical injuries beyond broken limbs, and the mainland is presented as a dangerous expanse that sews together isolated vegetative biomes with areas occupied by tall obelisks of brick, mortar, and steel.

There is certainly more to explore in the world of 28 Years Later past this point of the film, such as if the island is truly self-sufficient or if trade is involved, as well as the further exploration of the island’s cultural practices and whether they stem from the days of yore or are completely of their design. Garland can build off of this worldly foundation at any point and as much as he wants, past the obvious The Last of Us influences that hang over the visage of this post-apocalyptic world, like a bright yellow raincoat hung on a black wall.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t; the focus on world-building and Jamie as a character are abandoned halfway through 28 Years Later, right after Spike witnesses something morally askew, and are replaced by what appears to be a new focus: a coming-of-age tale where the end goal is the acceptance of death as a truism of life.

The switch between one focus and another is jarring, as what was in actuality half the film feels like a fully completed first act out of the three-act structure films are built on. All this time spent on world-building and how characters thrive and behave within it, alluding to the strong possibility that 28 Years Later would be a grounded peer into the aftermath of man’s unconscious burnt by its own doing, similar to 28 Days Later, but 28 years after the fact, and yet nothing; it’s forgotten for something else. Pity.

Isolated, the latter half’s existential focus happens to be quite appealing, and even though the direction that the film was clearly going in originally was forsaken for something with a little more texture, I could see the existential half gelling well with the other, but only if its foundation is established early on while its world and characterisations are being built upon. Doing so wouldn’t make Spike’s journey to venture out to find Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) to treat Isla’s illness feel so abrupt.

The two are separate ideas when placed side by side, yet I get the impression that Garland may have wanted to incorporate both in some way. Was being a logical follow-up to the first film’s approach with a similar lens, but with much less intensity due to its survivalist nature, not good enough? Or, maybe this is just what happens when one takes on too much responsibility in such a short period of time?

Garland did take on the responsibility of writing and directing Warfare (2025) in February 2024—one month after he took on writing 28 Years Later, a sequel to a film released 22 years ago (21 if you’re from the US). Could this unfocused product be the result of artistic burnout? More than likely.

What I do know for certain is that the transition between survivalist and existentialist philosophy doesn’t feel natural at all. It’s almost as though the film’s latter focus may have been serendipitous but came at a time late into Garland’s writing, and due to wanting to avoid any potential discrepancies with time or budget or both, he took on the idea, hastily made a single connection just so there is something there to bridge the two halves together, and submitted it for approval.

This tacked-on idea doesn’t feel fully fleshed out or realised; it’s half-baked, as it doesn’t go as far as it should to properly convey the subject it wishes to discuss. For example, why is Jamie literally uprooted from the script and forced to meander about in some unseen area until Garland decides he is ready to use him, if at all? Why wasn’t he written into this coming-to-existential-truism premise so that both he and Spike can accept the cold indifference of the universe together? They both have a strong relationship with Isla, and because of this, they need to come to terms with the two truisms of life to accept a potentiality if it ever comes.

Despite needing more time to marinate, what is there, though, is enjoyable, even if some bits are nonsensical, like the idea of Spike—someone who’s still a bud—thinking he can handle the infected all by himself while dragging his mother’s nearly lifeless corpse around the mainland to find Dr Kelson. The focus on death as an inevitability feels well done, and Dr Kelsen as both a character and an existentialist guide of sorts was appropriate, especially with Fiennes playing the role; I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing the job.

There is just one last problem with 28 Years Later, and that is there is another shift, though this shift isn’t predicated on the new narrative but a doorway of sorts that will allow Boyle and Garland to create more films off of it. Boyle did state that 28 Years Later would be part of a new sequel trilogy, and the next film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, is slated for release next year.

With this doorway comes a huge tonal shift that was one of the most jarring I’ve ever experienced in my life, and no, I’m not being hyperbolic. 28 Years Later goes from survivalist and existentialist to campy Swedish hip-hop sentai happy hour. Sounds absurd, right? Well, it is, and it plays out as preposterously as it reads.

With the culmination of these three shifts, 28 Years Later has a terrible identity crisis. It seems as though Boyle wanted to encompass the entirety of the tonal spectrum he has covered throughout his entire filmography into one film, making it meta in an understated yet unwarranted way, while also trying to translate that feeling of dread and horror from the original film to fit into the current cinematic climate.

So, Boyle and Garland signed up for a trilogy of 28 Days sequels at a time when Garland had the possibility of getting Warfare made in near future, and the first film, arguably the most important of any would-be trilogy, is of this quality? Goodness. I was exhausted by the end and couldn’t wait to get home, yet on my way back, a quote from Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism kept swimming in my head:

“…capitalism brings with it a massive desacralisation of culture. It is a system that is no longer governed by any transcendent Law; on the contrary, it dismantles all such codes, only to re-install them on an ad hoc basis. The limits of capitalism are not fixed by fiat, but defined (and redefined) pragmatically and improvisationally. This makes capitalism very much like the Thing in John Carpenter’s film of the same name: a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolising and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact.”—Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism).

Suddenly, 28 Years Later started to add up. The short, media-inspired editing, the willingness to compromise creativity, the use of VFX and visual flair to titillate audiences to compensate for these compromises—it all became clear: 28 Years Later isn’t the proper sequel to 28 Days Later that stans and admirers have been clamouring for, and even more so with the collective distaste towards 28 Weeks Later.

It only has elements and brushstrokes of ingenuity, of greatness that could have been. Its world, its characters, their worries and fears amidst viral mutation consuming the world… all present the perfect basis for a great screenplay. However, Boyle and Garland chose to be ‘yes-men’, showing co-operation in exchange for a corporate pay cheque. It’s ironic that a film about the certainty of death would compromise its artistic vision for something like money or possessions, which are only valuable because we say they are, and can’t be taken with us when we die.

28 Years Later has a great start, despite some blemishes, and plenty of great ideas to boot; however, it undoes itself and spirals into an abyss of unfocused writing, characterisations, and a comical tone. I’m not sure how many more Alex Garland-related projects I can take, especially now he’s become a corporate shill, citing his favourite films in interviews and creating hollowed-out imitations he claims were inspired by them.

UK • USA | 2025 | 115 MINUTES | 2.76:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Danny Boyle.
writer: Alex Garland.
starring: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Edvin Ryding, Chi Lewis-Parry, Christopher Fulford, Amy Cameron, Stella Gonet, Jack O’Connell, Erin Kellyman & Emma Laird.