28 Years Later
28 Years Later
A group of survivors of the rage virus live on a small island. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors.
Jacob O’Neal reviewedJuly 4, 2025
23 years after the events of 28 Days Later, we pick up the story of what happened to the world after the rage virus decimated the whole of England. Our story begins with a child named Jimmy. We see him and something other kids watching Teletubbies. Some infected arrive and kill all the kids but Jimmy. He runs and sees everyone else in the building dying as he flees. After we see him run to the church where he sees his father, the priest, willingly and joyfully accept his in a creepy sort of anti-god sort of way. Jimmy runs and then we move forward to an unrelated village and a new group of people with no relation to Jimmy.
We are now focused on Spike and his parents who live in a village on an island in Scotland when his dad takes him on his first hunt while him mom lays sick and dying at home. It quickly seems that Spike is going to be our lead. We follow his journey to take his mother to a doctor whom the village believes to be crazy while his dad is too busy disappointing his son who is very protective of his mother.
This movie was done very well. In fact, and I mean no ill will toward Danny Boyle with this statement, this felt more like an Alex Garland movie. Yes, he wrote it, just as he did with the first, but the first one felt like a Danny Boyle movie. Same with The Beach and Sunshine, his other collaborations with Garland. Somehow this felt more like Civil War or Men in its style and story structure. My only real complaint with the film is something I will not spoil here, just a broad statement to make my point. Movies should have a definitive end. You can have loose threads to pick up if a sequel comes along. But the thing that hurts many budding franchises is the thinking that they can set up the next one at the end of the current film. It never works. And people leave the theater almost disappointed because it undercuts the finale. Otherwise, this movie is really well written, performed and directed. It’s well worth watching. Boyle and Garland have made a couple of “zombie” movies that try to do what George Romero did with his “Dead” films, making them about something else and just having the zombie as the catalyst. Kudos to Boyle and Garland for not making Trainspotting 2 with this one.