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.
Michael Heimgartner reviewedJuly 6, 2025
A Disappointing Return After So Many Years – Missed Potential Everywhere
Danny Boyle is back in the director’s chair. Alex Garland on the script. On paper, that sounds like a dream team for 28 Years Later. What could go wrong, right? Well… apparently a lot.
I know the international reviews are largely positive, but after my screening, the audience’s reaction was pretty clear: disappointment. And I’m right there with them. This just didn’t work for me at all.
Let’s start with the premise itself. We’ve waited so long for a sequel. Boyle and Garland always said they’d only return if they had the right script. This is the story they landed on? Seriously? It feels like such a letdown.
The infected (and yes, they’re not zombies, I know) are basically window dressing this time. There’s no real tension or threat like in the previous films. The father-son dynamic, with Jamie as the lead, just fell flat for me. Jamie is consistently unsympathetic, making it hard to care about his journey at all. The island group is equally bland, with motivations that make them difficult to root for or even understand.
Spike, one of the main characters, acts so unbelievably stupid at times that I genuinely facepalmed in the theater. As for the mother-son subplot? Totally forgettable and emotionally hollow. Ralph Fiennes was the highlight for me – his character is cryptic, magnetic, and actually interesting. But even he’s criminally underused.
The pacing is a huge issue. The first act drags like old chewing gum stuck to a shoe. When the story finally "gets going," it does so with such an eye-rollingly dumb inciting event that it completely took me out of it. The climax is worse: it descends into tonal chaos that feels like a total misfire. I just sat there at the end thinking: What the hell did I just watch?
Then there’s the visual style. I get that Boyle loves his grainy, raw aesthetic. But the iPhone-level film quality? The weird, wannabe-artsy interludes? They clashed horribly with the supposed gritty realism. Instead of feeling immersive, it felt cheap and jarring. And don’t get me started on the infected scenes – they looked almost trashy, lacking the visceral intensity and detail that made the originals so iconic.
Where 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later excelled in mood, dread, and world-building, this film remains vague, half-baked, and unfocused. After a 28-year time jump, I expected more exploration of what had changed in that world. Instead, we get empty suggestions and lots of open questions with no satisfying answers.
Honestly, this is my biggest disappointment of the year so far. The trailer was incredible, and my expectations were sky-high. But this sequel feels like a rushed, underdeveloped cash-in that squanders the talent involved. There was so much potential here – and they missed it completely.