Movie Review: 28 Years Later

28 Years Later is one of the most frustrating watches I have had in 2025. The third entry in the 28 Days franchise brought back director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, the team from the first film, 28 Days Later, to show us what the world is like following the outbreak of the Rage Virus. It is made with the skill and kinetic energy we have come to expect from a Danny Boyle film, and the film has interesting ideas and themes that it wants to explore.

But 28 Years Later has two major problems. The first is that it isn’t scary at all. The second, and biggest problem, is the film’s choice of who to focus on.

28 Years Later follows the events of 28 Weeks Later, where the Rage Virus was mostly contained at the start of the film, only for a second wave to take over. The second wave has ravaged most of Europe, with the British Isles being under indefinite quarantine. A small community of survivors has formed on the island of Lindisfarne, an island connected to the mainland by a heavily fortified tidal causeway. Among this community is Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a scavenger who lives with his wife Isla (Jodie Comer), who is stricken with a mysterious illness, and son Spike (Alfie Williams).

The film picks up on an important day for Spike, as he makes his first trip to the mainland to hunt in an island coming-of-age ritual. The first half hour or so of 28 Years Later felt like the movie we were shown in the trailers and felt in the spirit of the first two films. Boyle allows us to explore the mainland and shows us what our characters are hiding from. We meet some slow-moving infected who slug around on the ground but are easy targets for Jamie and Spike to kill. We are also introduced to the Alpha, a mutated version of the infected who is stronger and more intelligent than your typical infected. The Alpha leads a pack of several infected people, and when Jamie and Spike are seen by an Alpha, they are chased by what feels like dozens of infected. This was easily the most intense and scary part of the film and showcased Boyle’s eccentric style of filmmaking.

Jamie and Spike make it back to their community despite the Alpha’s best efforts. Spike, shaken by the whole experience, doesn’t think he is ready to be a scavenger like his father yet. But when he gets word that there might be a doctor on the mainland who could help his mom, he hatches a plan to get him and his mom to the mainland to find the doctor. The rest of the film focuses on Spike and Isla’s journey to find this doctor, where they encounter several infected people while trying to avoid the Alpha. The action and intensity of the first act of the film disintegrates into a more somber, melancholic tone and turns from a terrifying zombie apocalypse movie into a mother-son journey about coping with and accepting death as part of life. It’s a profound idea from Boyle and Garland, especially in a movie that takes place in a world surrounded by death for so long.

But despite the strong idea, the execution is boring. Any hope of 28 Years Later being as scary as either of its predecessors is thrown out the window. I never fully invested in Spike’s journey, and Isla, despite being played by the great Jodi Comer, is written with very little depth. The only saving grace during this part of the film is Ralph Fiennes and his performance as the doctor who is obsessed with collecting the skulls of those he kills.

While certainly not a terrible film, the lack of scares and interesting characters makes 28 Years Later one of the bigger disappointments of 2025.

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