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.
PrimeViews reviewedAugust 17, 2025
I have a pretty bad history with these films. I saw part of 28 Days Later, and, while it seemed good, I thought the visual quality of the film was pretty bad, so I ended up dropping it. I later tried with 28 Weeks, which looked better, and has one of my favorite movie intro scenes of all time, but then the movie takes a hard nosedive after (Spoilers) the main character, played by the excellent Robert Carlyle, is killed off. I also dropped out of that one.
You would think I'd have adjusted my expectations for this one, but for some reason I thought it might actually be great. The bone tower looked really cool in the trailers, and 28 Years just sounds pretty crazy. Judging by my rating of the movie, it's evident I was unable to enjoy it much. I hardly liked anything in the movie, other than the acting performances being good, and one emotional moment which is good, in a vacuum. I don't really like anything else.
The pacing is very bad, I was just so bored for the majority of the movie, which is probably the biggest sin a zombie movie can make. I've heard people say the first half is intense and amazing, and then it loses steam in the second half. But to be honest, I can't entirely agree. I thought the first half wasn't much better than the second. Pacing still isn't great, and while there are a few decent moments with zombie variants, it unfortunately comes at the cost of the story.
The story in this movie is overall not good, very shallow, generic, and boring. But in the first half it was at its worst, since the movie was totally aimless. In the second half, the story begins to develop a bit, but in the end it's still super generic. Usually movies with such a simple story make up for it with good action and fun factor. But somehow this movie also fails at that. The action is so forgettable and sparse. Having zombie variants is a cool concept that maybe worked in the first half, but goes downhill as soon as you see what Alphas look like. What a hideous design. And not even in a cool, creepy way, it's just awful.
And of course, this is all without even mentioning the ending. I'm personally not going to hate on it too much, since I find it to be one of the "least worst" things about the movie. But it's still pretty questionable, and it all depends on how they handle it on the sequel, which I doubt I will watch, since it'll probably also fail at all the other important things a good movie needs to have.
Overall, 28 Years Later is kind of a nothing burger. I didn't get anything out of it, and it was totally forgettable for the most part. I don't think it can quite be called a bad movie despite all my criticisms, since the performances are still good, the characters are solid for the most part, the world is at least a bit interesting, that one emotional moment is pretty decent (you'll know when you get to it), and the first half was pretty ok. But I still can't bring myself to wholeheartedly recommend it. I give 28 Years Later 2.5 out of 5 stars, or 5/10.