‘28 Years Later’ is a zombie movie with heart

Don’t worry, the brains are there, too. And guts. And spines.

I saw 28 Years Later last during a rare weekend to myself. I actually caught it as part of a double feature, heading right down the hall after Materialists ended (yes, I paid for both). It was a weird combo; besides the fact that both are rare examples of quality summer fare for adult audiences, they’re not really two films that go together.

I wrote my review of Materialists rather quickly, dashed off during a night at a coffee shop while my kids were in Vacation Bible School. It was easy because when I was watching Materialists, I knew I was watching a great movie and I knew why. When I walked out of 28 Years Later, I knew I’d need to let it sit before I could tackle it.

Danny Boyle’s legacy sequel – coming more than two decades after the original 28 Days Later – is a weird beast, and I don’t mean that as a criticism. I’d say that it’s not what I expected from a 28 Days Later sequel, but the truth is that I had no expectations for one. I enjoy Boyle’s original – I rewatched it in preparation for this one, and it holds up as a masterpiece of tension – but I didn’t really need a third entry¹. When I heard that Boyle and writer Alex Garland were heading back to the franchise, I assumed we’d just get a reshuffling of the original story – maybe the Rage virus was back after years of lying dormant. Maybe it spread. But I had no real expectations because I wasn’t left with any lingering questions.

But 28 Years Later continually surprised me by going into unanticipated directions that evolve the story and take Garland and Boyle’s world to new thematic and emotional places. I can’t remember the last time I sat in a big studio summer sequel and had no idea where anything was headed. I don’t know if all its big swings connect, but it’s a more original and thoughtful movie than I expected, and I’m always happy for that attempt.

The film opens, as these films do, with a nerve-wracking set piece, as a bunch of young British kids watch Teletubbies while a Rage-infected horde breaks down the doors outside. We watch one child run to a church to seek help from the local priest, but the Father has gone mad as he welcomes the apocalypse and is swarmed by the mob. The film than cuts and picks up nearly three decades later.

Slightly retconning the cliffhanger ending to 28 Weeks Later, a title card informs audiences that the Rage virus was pushed back from other countries and that England was quarantined. Our story starts on an island just off the British mainland, which has rebuilt itself as best as possible. Spike (Alfie Williams) is a young boy taken to the mainland with his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), to hunt the infected – a rite of passage for kids in this community. His mother (Jodie Comer) languishes at home with a mysterious illness.

The first third of the movie isn’t exactly predictable, but it's in line with what I’d expected. Jamie and Spike set out onto the mainland and we see how the infected have evolved. Boyle and Garland think up several new threats – there are disgustingly fat zombies that slither on the ground to eat worms, as well as Alphas that lead entire packs and like to rip the heads off their prey complete with spines connected, like Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat. Boyle ramps up the intensity and delivers several white-knuckle moments, including a mad dash back to the island under a starlit sky that is one of the most arrestingly beautiful moments I’ve seen in a horror film since Sinners.

And then the film becomes something different, a child’s quest and coming of age story told through a filter that’s part monster movie, part medieval fantasy and part Apocalypse Now. The intensity doesn’t fully subside – there’s still plenty of head-ripping and zombie gore, as well as a tense sequence at a gas station filled with flammable vapors – but the movie is also willing to sit in the quiet and focus on the relationship between Spike and his mother as they pursue a mysterious doctor living in the wilderness (the movie hides his face until the third act, but the marketing’s told us to expect Ralph Fiennes) among the zombies.

28 Years Later often feels like two films. It still delivers the tension and terror of the first film. Garland is fascinated by worlds that fall apart and the darker sides of human nature, and he builds on the themes of the first film to explore how we live together (or don’t) when the world falls apart – life after the pandemic seems to have invigorated him. And working with cinematography Anthony Dod Mantle once again, Boyle recaptures the grungy, DIY, punk-rock aesthetic of the first film, The movie is largely filmed on modified iPhones – although it still looks better than the first film, which was made on consumer-grade digital cameras at the turn of the century and appears to be filmed through a layer of filth (that’s part of its charm) – and there are still the quick cuts and driving needle drops to ramp up the tension. There’s also an effect that looks like a KMart version of bullet time to accompany the zombie kills that I particularly liked. The infected zombies are gross and scary, and the attacks of the Alphas particularly vicious.

But then there are long periods, particularly as the film reaches its third act, in which the movie grows contemplative and quiet. The gorgeous landscapes take prominence, and the movie becomes more somber. There are reveals about the infected that suggest hope is not loss, humanity might not be at the end. And there’s a long stretch in the third act in which the scares drop away and the movie becomes a powerful and emotional musing on life and death, in which we realize that even at the end of the world, small-scale tragedy can still affect us and hurt more than large-scale disaster.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Boyle is gentler and more introspective in older age²; his sequel to Trainspotting eight years ago dialed back the first film’s aggressive energy in favor of a quieter anti-nostalgia piece. He and Garland don’t seem to be too interested in repeating the same beats from 28 Days Later but rather opening up the world and exploring how life goes on in spite of our regular comforts. The world has fallen, but death by natural causes still exists. The people of Spike’s village seem eager to rebuild society – but in their preferred image, as it’s reminiscent of a very specific type of English village – as a way to reorient their lives, and they take pride in attacking and killing the infected, proving they’re above it, taking back their world. Fiennes’ mysterious doctor is initially presented as a potential threat, but when we meet him, he’s kind and soft; he mourns the loss of all life, even that of the infected, and has found a way to live among them and make a memorial to all the dead – because, of course, infected or no, they’re all people. And while it appears civilization has fallen, life still goes on – how do we live in the apocalypse (tonally, this movie has nothing in common with The Life of Chuck, but it would make a fascinating thematic double feature)?

It’s perhaps not surprising that this movie made me think of the COVID-19 pandemic; after all, the first film trafficked highly in 9/11 imagery, so why shouldn’t this one address our most recent global tragedy? But it’s not the fear of infection or even the idea of isolation and quarantine that got me reminiscing. It’s the failed potential we had to change our world. Rather than lean into the pain and tension, we tried to restore what came before instead of allowing ourselves time to mourn, live with the wound, and ask what matters. Boyle and Garland also examine our tendency to make life all about the big trials and lose sight of the everyday matters and heartbreaks that still need tended to. My grandfather died during the pandemic – not of COVID, but of long-term illness. We still had to mourn him, bury him and deal with the loss, even as the world was obsessed with the global illness that dominated the news.

28 Years Later has a lot on its mind. There’s a critique of toxic masculinity running through Spike’s coming of age story — and, based on the movie’s final moments, that will carry over into the next film — and an examination of British society and history that I’ll leave it to people better suited than me to address. In its third act, it simply becomes a quiet story about facing death and letting go, and there are moments where its title might have been better as 28 Tears Later. Comer, Williams and Fiennes are all fantastic in these final passages – and while he’s not in the film as much as the first act indicated, Taylor-Johnson is solid as the rough and tumble father figure. It’s the rare horror movie that works on a visceral, emotional level. On first pass, I was intrigued and caught up in the story, but the way it veered from the traditional sequel template distracted me. But this film has stuck to the ribs, and I’m impressed by where Boyle and Garland take his story.

I suppose I can’t talk about the movie without mentioning its divisive final scene. I won’t go into details for those who haven’t seen it, but it’s a moment that definitely doesn’t feel like a piece with the rest of the movie. There’s a much better ending just a few minutes earlier that could still close this story while opening the door for further adventures. I’ll admit the moment took me out of the movie – not because it ends on a cliffhanger (we know there’s a third movie coming out in January) but because, tonally, it doesn’t fit with the preceding two hours. I get why it’s frustrating some – even though if it came in the mid-credits, it would probably have the opposite effect. It robs the movie of some emotional resonance at the very end, choosing the get us excited instead of asking us to sit in the weight of the finale – which is also part of the theme of the movie – but I’ll admit I’m curious to see what happens next.

28 Days Later revolutionized the zombie movie – I know Shaun of the Dead was in the works concurrently – unleashing an interest in the subgenre that’s still strong today and introducing the concept of fast zombies³. I don’t think 28 Years Later is as groundbreaking. But it’s an evolution of the franchise all the same, exploring its world with unexpected heart and tenderness. I have no idea where it all goes from here, but I’m excited to follow this story.

1. I haven’t seen 28 Weeks Later since its opening weekend, but I remember enjoying that as well.

2. Not to name drop, but totally to name drop: In 2008, I had the opportunity to meet and interview Boyle when he was in Detroit making the press rounds for Slumdog Millionaire. And even then – only a decade into his career – he was thoughtful and warm, offering to make drinks (for a 15-minute interview) and talking excitedly about his earlier interest in the priesthood, and what he learned from working in the slums in India.

3. OK, OK. I know I’ve used the term “zombie” throughout this piece and that technically these are “rage-infected humans.” But that’s a lot more letters. And Boyle’s been clear that this is his reinterpretation and update of the zombie subgenre.