Rent 28 Years Later (2025)

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.

Very English yet Derivative Folk Horror with Nail-biting First Half but Odd Ending Setting up Part 3 - 28 Years Later review by PV

This is a very VERY English folk horror written by Alex Garland (with a posh BoHo Hampstead privileged background) who wrote the novel The Beach and the screenplay for that & 28 Days Later and who now seems to write and direct science-fiction films of varying quality, often based on video games.

He's worked a lot before as a screenwriter with Danny Boyle (almost 70 years old, a working class Lancashire grammar school boy who went to Bangor uni in Wales, started in theatre in 1980s then TV in 1990s incl directing 2 episodes of MORSE) whose SHALLOW GRAVE (not written by him) from 1995 is still a classic, I think miles better than the famous TRAINSPOTTING that came after it. He famously directed the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony Isle of Wonder.

So, to the film. It's a folk horror which treads well-trodden tropes of the future returning to some sort of rural even feudal past. Many novels/films have explored this before (I won't list them). I LOVED the very VERY northern English character of this film, the accents, location in historic island Lindisfarne (watch VIKINGS TV drama to see what happened there), & the landscape though I see some was filmed in Cheddar Gorge which is most definitely not northern England (it's Somerset, the West Country). THANK GOODNESS Danny Boyle is not one for tickbox diversity colourblind casting. Well done him. I shudder to think what the BBC would have done with the casting. Thankfully, they're too broke to make something like this.

The first half is brilliant, real edge-of-your-seat horror. Boyle is superb at such action scenes, fast-editing, making cinema exciting - which many Zombie films are not. 2016's Britflick THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is my absolute fave zombie film).

I see what the screenwriter is doing in the 2nd half of his script - adding jeopardy, bigger obstacles, as per screenwriting course classes; he does this by introducing new characters which does slow things down and is not always effective. Btw do not think too much about logic of how humans can evolve into 3 distinct species in just 28 years... Just go with the sometimes cartoonish comic-strip computer game vibe. Forget too about the much-touted Brexit allegory claims which are beyond silly. Britain is an island. As is Ireland, Deal with it. LA RAGE is the name for RABIES which they had on continental Europe, in France, but the Channel & customs stopped it coming to the UK. So there!

Danny Boyle says he was inspired to make movies by APOCALYPSE NOW, & so a Kurtz-style figure appears, at first talked of darkly & mysteriously, just like in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS & the Viet Nam movie's script too. A common technique to inspire dread and foreboding (cf Hannibal Lecter). It sort of works, and I recommend watching the EXTRAS - short films which show the effort needed to make the BONE TEMPLE (which is the name of the next film, part 3, which i believe was filmed at the same time with the young actor playing 12-yr-old Spike, quick, before his voice broke...) I really liked the unstuffy un-maudlin un-emotional response to death.

The set design, costumes, locations etc are great as is the acting & cinematography. I still prefer 28 DAYS LATER however, as it's more believable - it COULD happen. This? Nah. Not with humans evolving into 3 new species in 28 years and someone mainland Europe not being infected - when they are way more vulnerable than the British Isles (COVID first entered Europe into Italy with Chinese owners/workers who've bought up the leather-making industry in the suburbs of Florence in the last 20+ years)

The ending? Hmmm. For me it does not work and makes a real horror film a cartoon character one, NO SPOILERS. I liked the ending up until that point and the absurd silly JIMMYS which I presume reference the prologue in this film and the boy there. It may not auger well for the third film if it is more of that...

Overall, a decent and very entertaining watch. 4 stars