Boyle and Garland's Triumphant Return: '28 Years Later' Reinvigorates the Rage Virus Saga

A little over two decades after director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland redefined the zombie apocalypse genre with the kinetic and politically charged 28 Days Later, the duo returns with the highly anticipated sequel, 28 Years Later. The 2002 original remains one of the most influential horror films of the 21st century, renowned for its high-intensity suspense and sharp allegory, notably discarding George A. Romero’s slow-moving undead in favor of fast-moving, swarm-like flesh-eaters that ravaged an isolated Great Britain.

This first installment of a planned trilogy subverts genre expectations in numerous ways, not least by centering its narrative on a 12-year-old boy, Spike (Alfie Williams), who emerges as the undeniable protagonist, portrayed with a poignant mix of vulnerability and resilience by the terrific newcomer. The film transcends the survival thriller framework by weaving in tender familial drama, a stirring spiritual thread, and notes of sly humor. Subtle touches, such as a Shell gas station sign with a missing 'S' and an attached diner named Happy Eater, enhance the atmosphere. Boyle and Garland demonstrate that their inspiration for pulse-pounding terror remains fresh, placing this "rage virus" installment in league with not only their earlier film but also genre standouts like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan.

Garland's script, which bypasses the events of the 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, begins with an amusing jab at British isolationism, noting that the virus was driven back from continental Europe to be contained on the U.K. mainland. This notion—a kind of reverse Brexit that floods the island with the unwanted infected while European military boats patrol the shores—injects an irreverent political subtext.

The prologue maintains this irreverent tone, showing young children attempting to ignore disturbing adult noises while watching a Teletubbies episode. These gibberish-spouting, smiling creatures, with monitors in their stomachs, are almost a trippy metaphor for infantilized post-apocalyptic humanoids. When a frenzied cluster of infected bursts through the door, the video image is splashed with blood. One child, Jimmy, manages to escape to a church, revealed to be the son of a deranged preacher who welcomes the deathly mob to the "Day of Judgment" and presses a crucifix into the boy's hand. This sequence ensures Jimmy will reappear in the future.

Spike lives with his parents, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer), on Holy Island, a landmass off the northeast coast of England separated from the mainland by a causeway only accessible at low tide. Isla is largely confined upstairs, feverish with an undiagnosed, agonizing illness that causes erratic lucidity. The small, tight-knit community behind fortress walls has deliberately regressed, fashioning a society untouched by the modern world with designated roles—farmer, hunter, fisherman, etc.

In this respect, Boyle and Garland infuse the new chapter with shades of British folk horror, a tone enhanced by interspersed footage depicting England at war throughout history. This is further layered with haunting imagery of stampeding deer, flocks of crows, and an unsettling voiceover of Rudyard Kipling’s 1903 warfare poem “Boots.”

Despite being a couple of years too young for the usual age of their first mainland expedition, Jamie decides Spike is ready to accompany him on a crossing to notch up his first kill of an infected with his archery skills. The community’s festive send-off marks this as an important rite of passage, though the gatekeeper sternly warns that no rescuers will be sent for those who fail to return.

While the human survivors have stepped back in time, the infected have continued to evolve into new variants, reminiscent of the Cordyceps mutants in The Last of Us.

Slow-Lows are corpulent, slug-like ground-crawlers—fleshy, misshapen blobs with slimy undersides that resemble grotesque Botero sculptures.

The infected familiar from the original virus strain are now sinewy, feral, and naked figures wandering the land, their clothes long disintegrated.

The most dangerous are the hulking Berserkers, or Alphas, on whom the virus has had a steroidal effect, enabling them to violently tear the heads off victims. The chief specimen (Chi Lewis-Parry) is a massive beast whose brute strength is matched by cunning, and a prominently featured prosthetic appendage.

The initial expedition goes well, with Jamie guiding Spike through verdant woodlands and fields. The lad makes his first kill, planting an arrow in a Slow-Low. Interestingly, the scene provides evidence of family groups having formed among the infected. The mournful cries of nearby Slow-Lows attract attention from other infected who line a picturesque hill waiting for the Alpha's signal to attack. That stunning long shot captures a classic English pastoral scene, its tranquility broken by menacing savages who look like refugees from an earlier millennium.

The flight through the forest is one of many thrilling sequences, with the infected fast on their heels, forcing them to take refuge in an abandoned farm building until low tide. During the night, Spike spots a fire that Jamie shrugs off. Upon their hair-raising return and subsequent celebratory feast, Spike is disturbed by his father's exultant untruths, regaling the crowd with false accounts of his son's heroics when the boy had been petrified during the attack. This confusion about his father's dishonesty is magnified when he observes Jamie sneaking off to have sex with a young village woman and when old family friend Sam (Christopher Fulford) suggests the fire he saw was lit by the eccentric former physician, Dr. Kerson (Ralph Fiennes).

Following a bitter clash with his dad, Spike orchestrates a distraction to get his dying mother off the island and into the dangerous countryside in search of the doctor he hopes can cure her. The bond between Spike and his mother becomes the heart of the film, made more affecting by Isla’s delirium, which causes her to constantly confuse her son with her late father. Crucially, her maternal instinct is still sufficiently present to kick in during one close call, revealed through the haze of her mind. While Aaron Taylor-Johnson ably conveys the conflicts of a loving but flawed father and husband, Jodie Comer is the movie’s standout. On the mainland, Isla subtly transforms, slowly drawing strength from nature, becoming more beautiful as she moves away from her sickly, bedraggled appearance.

The pair briefly travels with young Swedish Naval officer Erik (Edvin Ryding), the last survivor of a patrol boat wrecked on the shores of Scotland, who calls the wreck "Scotch on the rocks," a line as mystifying to Spike as the stranger's cellphone. Erik's lament that he should have been a delivery driver appears to be a nod back to Cillian Murphy's character's profession in the first film. The most daring sequence occurs in a train carriage, where Isla assists an infected in distress, inadvertently alerting the Alpha to their presence.

The film is at its most moving when they finally reach Kerson, where they behold the magnificent “Memento Mori” temple he has built out of skulls and bones to honor the dead. Kerson honors love among the living by protecting Spike and Isla and bringing them peace, a masterstroke of production and costume design by Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl. The performances of Comer, Williams, and Fiennes—who is wonderful in the supporting role of Kerson, a half-possessed wild man and half-learned man of science whose body is daubed in iodine as an infected deterrent—give 28 Years Later a soulful core that distinguished the 2002 original, testifying to the endurance of humanity in the darkest dystopias.

The film's visual textures are intoxicating, shot by Anthony Dod Mantle on the sprawling canvas of the 2.76:1 widescreen aspect ratio often used for IMAX. The dynamic muscularity of the camerawork is mirrored by Jon Harris’ similarly agile editing, laced with nerve-jangling smash cuts. Johnnie Burn’s enveloping sound design works seamlessly with the wide-ranging score by the Scottish indie art pop/alternative hip hop outfit Young Fathers. Boyle, a genius in the inventive use of music, weaves in disturbing passages of ambient synth distortion with propulsive action riffs and violent drumbeats. The inclusion of both the solemn 19th-century Scottish hymn “Abide With Me” and a ferocious blast of death metal signals that the film is not playing it safe.

One of the chief rewards of 28 Years Later is its sincerity; it never feels like a cynical commercial revisit. Instead, the filmmakers appear driven by a story whose allegorical commentary on today’s grim political landscape is more relevant than ever. Intriguing narrative building blocks put in place for future installments suggest they cannot arrive fast enough.