Movie Review: 28 Years Later... (2025)

28 Years Later... (2025) directed by Danny Boyle

A long time after the first movie (and seemingly ignoring the second), society in infected England is more or less gone. Holy Island has a thriving human community since it is isolated from the rest of England during high tide. The locals have made a fence and watchtower to keep out the infected. Their community gets by pretty well with the occasional excursions into England proper. One tradition is when a boy goes over to kill some infected using a bow and arrow, so it's a rite of passage to manhood. Spike (Alfie Williams) is taken by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on such an excursion, against the wishes of Spike's mom Isla (Jodie Comer). She is sick in bed with an unidentified illness that is also de facto incurable since Holy Island has no doctor. On "mainland" England, Spike has a rough time of it but spots some fires or lights in the distance. The light at sea is a patrol boat enforcing the quarantine of England. The light on the island is another matter which Jamie refuses to explain. Back in town, Spike finds out the fires are kept by a doctor who may or may not be crazy. Spike decides to take his mom to be cured by the doctor because he is desperate. Jamie objects but Spike contrives an opportunity to escape. His adventure seeking a cure for his mom will be a rougher but more certain path to manhood.

While the premise is interesting, I found it a little too unbelievable. The movie starts with a 28-year-old flashback of a priest's son fleeing from his small town with a cross from his dad, who embraces the apocalyptic nature of the Rage virus outbreak. The sequence seems like tone-setting but it becomes a bookend with an elaborate and very hard to believe final scene. The main story is okay if a bit episodic. Spike goes from a scared kid to a more mature fellow in a good way, given the bonkers world he lives in. The actors are generally good. The atmosphere is bleak and the visuals have the excessive cutting used in most modern zombie films. As a projection of the first film's future, this retains a bleak attitude but adds a much more sentimental attitude that doesn't quite fit.

Not recommended--this is a hodge-podge of ideas that don't quite hang together as a coherent whole.