28 Years Later (2025)

Rated R for being a sequel to 28 Days Later.  If you've seen the Rage virus zombies in that one and how that movie is filmed in an incredibly graphic manner, you know what to expect with its sequel.  Boyle plays up the chaotic, covering the screen with gore and violence.  But add to that is the fact that, because so much time has passed since the original film, all of the zombies are now nude.  Clothes have rotted away, so there's just a lot of violent, gory nudity on screen.  This one perhaps has a slightly more forgiving view of humanity compared to the original film, but it is still upsetting.

DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle

At least I'll have a big gap in blogs between Final Destination and Final Destination 2.  I went on a tear this weekend, guys.  I originally was just going to watch 28 Years Later, but my wife was out of time so I decided to keep myself entertained while I got some chores done.  So while bagging-and-boarding comics and while folding laundry, I watched a bunch of more movies.  I never thought that horror films between horror films would be considered a palate cleanser, but it was nice to watch movies just for the sake of watching movies. 

I love Danny Boyle.  This review might get to a place that is less than flattering, so I want to put my appreciation for Danny Boyle first and foremost.  One thing that I heard is that Danny Boyle hates repeating himself.  If you look at the genres of movies that the man has made, there has been a conscious attempt to tread new ground every time.  Now, I'm pretty sure that 28 Years Later is Danny Boyle's first sequel.  I suppose there's a paradox there.  This is the first time that he's done a sequel to something he created, which is technically doing something new.  But it is also a repetition of 28 Days Later, a movie that still pretty much holds up on its own. It's not a perfect horror movie, but it is its own thing.  I would also like to stress that I saw 28 Weeks Later, a movie that I remember Boyle distancing himself from because he saw it as a bit of a cash grab.  A lot of this might be inaccurate.  I'm not basing this on the Internet.  I'm basing this on my memory which is probably inaccurate.  

You would think that if Danny Boyle, a guy who prides himself on doing new things, came back to a franchise, especially one that he swore not to do sequels to, there would have to be a special reason.  It's not that 28 Years Later is bad.  There are things that I don't like about it and I'm going to be talking about that.  But the bigger issue is that I don't really see the point of this movie.  Maybe I'm too much obsessed with the "Why is this movie made?" question as opposed to just accepting that some things are out there as entertainment.  It's just that, the first movie hit hard.  One of the things about zombie films is that, even more than the bulk of genre storytelling out there, they are perfect environments to make commentary on the human condition.  It's why The Walking Dead was such a success.  One of the things about zombies is that characters aren't really allowed to get comfortable.  When people are always looking for shelter and survival, their true natures come out.  (Look at the Hierarchy of Needs!)  With the first film, Boyle used the landscape that he created to talk about the patriarchy and rape culture, coupled with how racism and sexism were forever linked.  What does 28 Years Later say?  Honestly, not much.

Part of what weirds me out about this movie is that Alex Garland is usually the champ of writing movies with a purpose.  This is more of a story about "How would things look like if technology hadn't advanced and we just got used to zombies at the gate?"  That's fun, but it isn't really engaging.  Also, for Garland, this script feels real loosey-goosey.  Here's a problem I had with it.  About every twenty minutes in the movie, I kept saying, "Oh, this is the plot."  I mean, the plot eventually was that Spike needed to get his mom to a doctor and, in the process, learned what it meant to lose one's parents.  But it takes a long time for the movie to make that choice.  For a lot of the film, I was thinking that this was a movie about breaking the rules to find someone who ran away.  Then I thought it was about how kids learn that their parents are just adults who might suck more than we thought they did.  Then it ended up being about the value of isolation.  And none of these ideas are really well explored because the stupid setting kept taking control of the movie.  Every time we got to something deep, like the notion that a baby can be born of a zombie, the movie forgot to let us breathe in that idea.  

Yeah, 28 Days Later is an absolutely rad zombie movie.  That's probably what it is remembered for.  I don't want to take away from that.  Let cool stuff be cool.  But when watching 28 Days Later, I was struck by how aggressively political the movie was.  This movie touches on some politics, mostly with its juxtaposition of war images with the people trying to survive.  But I'll be honest with you, I don't know if that imagery ever says anything except that violence exists in everybody.  The movie has this attitude of "This next thing happened."  Sometimes, the zombies are really smart and it is hard to move a foot ahead.  But when the movie, for the sake of pacing, needs the film to progress beyond action horror set pieces, everything kind of gets to be just fine.  Like, Spike is still way out there with a baby.  Do you understand that if I pitched a story about how a young boy has to travel across miles of zombieland with a newborn baby who is hungry and zombies are attracted to sound, how insane that story would have been? That's a movie in itself and it's frustrating that the film never capitalized on that.

And here's the kicker!  That wasn't the part that bothered me.  There are a couple of things that bother me about 28 Years Later.  The first is the hierarchy of zombies.  One thing that always pulls me out of survival horror games is the fact that video games tend to categorize their zombies.  It's not bad enough that zombies are scary because they will overwhelm you with their numbers.  The game developers always feel the need to make "more challenging zombies."  With the case of 28 Years Later, we have the Alphas.  Apparently, there's something in the Rage Virus that affects some people differently, giving them enhanced intellect coupled with a steroid like effect of an Olympian athlete.  That's...dumb?  I'm really sorry.  Like, I know that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost don't like Rage zombies because they run, but this Alphas thing is beyond the pale.  It also doesn't make sense that Dr. Kelson doesn't just kill the Alphas when he has the chance.  I mean, there's a scene where Kelson is being attacked with the baby in a hole and it looks like he's done for.  Luckily, Spike is quick enough to sedate the Alpha again.  Maybe the movie doesn't want to push its luck saying that Alphas are dimes a dozen.  I don't know.

But that doesn't mean that the movie is all bad.  First and foremost, Danny Boyle has a way with atmosphere.  Golly, these movies are upsetting.  They are genuinely very scary to the point that I was nervous that anyone was going to walk in and see the most upsetting thing that they would have seen at any moment.  He makes good movies and 28 Years Later looks great.  But even more than all that, I love Jodie Comer.  Golly, that woman can act and I love her interaction with Alfie Williams, who plays Spike.  If there's one really great addition to this movie, that comes from the struggle of a mother who is losing her grasp on reality with a child who cares for her above all things. That stuff is great.  

It also kills me that this in no way feels like a standalone film.  Danny Boyle breaks his own rule to film a movie and that movie needs a sequel to explain a lot of the first film?  I honestly thought that the upcoming movie was actually a spin-off.  Then I discovered it was its own beast?  It's hard to critique a movie that feels incredibly incomplete.  We know that Spike is out there and there's all these Jimmy Saviles running around doing flips.  I'm not quite sure what that's all about.  But I'm trying to treat this as a film in itself and I don't know if that's really true.  

So the takeaway is that I want to like this movie more than I do.  I don't dislike it, so maybe that's a win?