Twenty-two years after director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s surprise hit apocalypse film, “28 Days Later” (2002), entered the lexicon of zombie movies, they return with “28 Years Later.” Sure, the math doesn’t quite add up, but it’s an alternate-future sci-fi anyway, and aside from the same setup and world-building, there aren’t any characters that connect the two films, so I suppose it could have been called “48 Years Later” for all that’s worth. There was a sequel to the original movie called “28 Weeks Later.” I didn’t see it, and it wasn’t the hit the first entry was. But Boyle and Garland weren’t the director and writer of that one, and their return is one of many reasons why “28 Years Later” triumphs.
To set the record straight: I am not the world’s biggest fan of the zombie movie genre. I like apocalyptic dystopian just fine, but zombies kind of burn me out. Haven’t we covered everything already? After umpteen endless seasons of “The Walking Dead” and HBO’s “The Last of Us,” which, after only two seasons, is already wearing floss thin, I was hardly in the mood to see “28 Years Later,” but great filmmaking will get me every time, and this film has it in gore-drenched buckets.
A prologue scene from circa “28 Days Later” is all the setup required for the uninitiated. A mutated virus spreads through England, laying waste to millions and people into insane zombies. These zombies appear easy enough to kill, but not all zombies are alike. There are slow zombies, fast zombies, intelligent zombies, strong zombies, and sometimes a combination of quick, smart, and strong that the survivors, nearly three decades later, called Alphas.
The world “28 Years Later” inhabits is one where the virus is contained, and an unclear amount of England (perhaps just the British Isles) is under indefinite quarantine. The quarantine zone contains the zombies and an undetermined amount of uninfected inhabitants. There is a functioning village set off an otherwise remote coastal island, accessible by a causeway that is underwater for half the day during high tide and open during low tide. Does the outside world know about this island? Do they care? Perhaps, in the quarantine zone, it’s better just to leave things as they are.
For the most part, this little island community is functioning, although there are hints of odd behavior and elements of folk horror sprinkled in. After 28 years out of the loop, society has a way of carrying on through traditions and superstitions. One tradition is teaching the young how to hunt and forage on the mainland. It is here that we embark on the main plot, where a father, Jamie, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, prepares his 12-year-old son, Spike, for his first mainland rite of passage. Spike, played by newcomer Alfie Williams (who delivers one of the best child performances in many a decade) is smart, curious, and a bit scared by it all. However, he is someone the audience immediately roots for, and his journey will be the focus of most of the film’s runtime.
Spike’s mom, played by Jodie Comer, is suffering from a mysterious illness that worsens with each day. When Spike learns of a mainland hermit doctor who might be able to help his mom, Spike eventually makes a daring return trip to the world of zombies to make contact with the doctor in hopes of saving her.
That’s about all of the plot details I feel comfortable sharing. You want to know what happens? Great news! “28 Years Later” is currently playing in theaters, and you can catch it. Both the Nugget Theater in Hanover and the Lebanon Six Theater are playing it. What I want to discuss next is why this film surpasses almost every other zombie film that has come before it, save perhaps “Dawn of the Dead.” It’s all about the filmmaking.
Danny Boyle, the Academy Award-winning director of “Slumdog Millionaire” and acclaimed films such as “Trainspotting,” and “127 Hours” knows how to tell a story, and with frequent collaborator Alex Garland “Civil War,” and “Ex Machina” scripting, the two build a world worth exploration, characters you care about, and a plot that avoids the many tropes it skirts with, but takes in different directions.
Also back in the fold is Boyle’s go-to cinematographer, the award-winning Anthony Dod Mantle. Back in 2002, when they made “28 Days Later,” they crafted a visual look born out of necessity. With scarcely a budget to work with and a need to depict a deserted London, Boyle and Mantle shot the entire film using small, portable Canon Mini-DV cameras. The look of that film was decidedly home video, but the two worked with whatever visual shortcomings the technology provided and doubled down on the immediacy of the format, which provided a disorienting look that audiences found unsettling and scary.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s 23 years later since the first film’s release, and home video technology has come a long way. iPhones are nearly pocket film cameras, and Boyle and Mantle test the limits of the format by shooting almost the entire film on iPhone 15 Pro Max cameras. I’m sure they surrounded those phones with lenses and technology the average home filmmaking enthusiast would not own. Still, I’m delighted to report that the visuals they create are inventive, daring, and, at times, jaw-droppingly beautiful. A scene where Jamie and Spike must return to home base as the causeway begins to disappear under high tide, while being chased by an Alpha zombie during the evening, is flat-out breathtaking filmmaking. The look of that scene, and many like it, probably couldn’t or wouldn’t be achievable in any other way. And that is one of many reasons why this film succeeds to such a high level. It doesn’t resemble any other dystopian film or any other type of movie, for that matter. I’m sure it will look equally as fine watching it at home, but to see it on the big screen is something special.
The editing is another winner that deserves a shout-out. Everyone who comes to the zombie genre would be lying if they weren’t there, on some level, for the zombie kills. A zombie film with no gory kills is like watching a beach movie set on the Hoth system; it wouldn’t make much sense. Boyle doesn’t disappoint here. The kills are as inventive as every other aspect of the movie. Boyle freezes the frame, just for a split second, allowing the kills to be seen, with all its blood splatter intact. He and Mantle ratchet up the camera movements to increase the intensity, and as an audience, we feel it. I don’t know how scary this movie is (I don’t get scared by these types of films), but it’s definitely an intense experience.
There are so many things I haven’t told you about this film, and that leaves you with a lot to discover. Trust me when I say there are a lot of goodies waiting for you, including a setup for an already-shot sequel that has me counting the days till its release in January 2026.
James Kent is the arts editor at the Mountain Times.
