Rent 28 Years Later (2025)

Brexit and the Art of Dying - 28 Years Later review by griggs

28 Years Later manages to feel like a proper evolution of the original without losing the mood that made 28 Days Later such a genre high point. The film tackles death head-on—how we face it, how we prepare for it, and what we leave behind. It’s grief-stricken, sure, but never maudlin.

Alfie Williams is the breakout here: raw, grounded, quietly devastating. Jodie Comer brings weight and conviction, but Ralph Fiennes—brief though he is—steals every scene like he’s doing Shakespeare with blood on his boots.

The zombies, or rather the infected, have had an upgrade. They’re even faster, nastier, and somehow more symbolic—used sparingly but effectively. What really stuck, though, was the atmosphere: a kind of post-Brexit dread, with Britain isolated, fenced off, and abandoned while the rest of Europe carries on, keeping the infected at bay like a messy neighbour they no longer speak to. It’s not subtle, and that’s the point.

And that final scene? At first glance, it feels like a sly sequel hook—but the more it sinks in, the more unsettling it becomes. It’s not just setting up more mayhem—it drops a dark, provocative reference to Jimmy Savile that’s as bold as it is uncomfortable. Some will miss it entirely, others will ask if it’s too soon, and many will just sit there trying to process what they’ve seen. It’s a risky choice, deliberately jarring, and leaves you walking out not with a bang, but a queasy kind of dread.

Intriguing, Challenging Addition to the '28' films - 28 Years Later review by GI

With the tones of British folk horror director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have returned to the 'rage' virus that they started with their excellent 28 Day Later (2002). Britain is now an isolated country with foreign coastal patrols spotted to keep both the infected and uninfected in and visitors out as the virus continues to thrive. A small community of survivors has grown on Holy Island off the north east coast protected by a tidal causeway but having to fend for themselves. The centre of the story is a coming-of-age narrative that's sees 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams) taken to the mainland by his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in a rite of passage foray to kill any infected they come across. Spike learns there's a crazy but uninfected doctor named Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) living on the mainland relatively close by so against his father's wishes he ventures out with his very ill and mentally confused mother (Jodie Comer) to find him and in the hope he has a cure for his mum. On this journey Spike discovers more than he bargained for! Kelson is a sort of Kurtz figure and the infected (for the first time in the '28' films there is a mention of the word zombie) have evolved with some variants including very fast and big alpha ones. This is a film that confronts death and presents it as a part of life that should be recognised and respected. Spike learns the lesson of death mainly from Kelson but also with the experiences he faces. Technically the film is set around 2030 and so you have to be mindful that events we are all familiar with, some world changing, have not occurred within the film's storyline which will mean the film's ambiguous ending will mean more to British audiences than perhaps to others. I wondered if Boyle and Garland are making some kind of joke with it but it is a set up for the next film in what has been claimed will be a trilogy. But with it's allegory to Brexit and Britain's increased isolation from the world this film is a bold, intriguing and clever horror film.

Dire Middle Class Post Brexit Anxiety - 28 Years Later review by LW

If 28 Days later was a slick undead thriller with some new moves and nothing much to say then 28 Weeks later upped the body count, deployed a terrifying Robert Carlisle and did a nifty bit of Iraq allegory. 28 Years later falls well short of either.

This is dull. Epically dull. It feels more like clunky 1970s folk horror than any attempt at building a plausible post apocalyptic world. Anyone with any knowledge of human civilization knows that the society on show is technologically nonsense from where they get their beer to how the landscape looks. The geography of Lindisfarne is CGI edited to make the plot work and that adds to the immersion breaking nonsense. The quarantined Britain is a lazy middle class Brexit anxiety that also breaks the immersion. The satire isn't satirical because it comes across as sincerely believed and condescending rather than tongue in cheek commentary (Britain has devolved to be full of zombie cave people but one has an uninfected baby so there is hope).

The worst part is the utter, predictable tedium though. To pad out Garland's lazy script and mumbling and banal dialogue, Boyle interrupts scenes with snippets of other movies, snippets from 28 Weeks Later, news reel fragments and overlays it with discordant white noise. It takes 90 seconds to read the wiki synopsis of this whole film and you get nothing more by sitting through two hours of it.

When Alex Garland delivers he delivers and when he doesn't you get this and this falls even below Civil War as tedious, pompous dross rather than the heights of work like Sunshine. 28 Days Later was a solid offering from Boyle and Garland that set up an intelligent sequel by a better writer. Despite the attempt to sneer at their fellow Britons the only thing that has gone backward is this franchise because this is a truly regressive bit of unimaginative, drab, indulgent, smugness.