Hal Kitchen
28 Days Later was and still remains, one of the best zombie movies ever made. Few films can claim to have reinvented their genre overnight the way that one did. As far as zombie movies go, there’s before 28 Days Later and after. No longer the awkward shambling of Romeo’s flesh eaters, henceforth, zombies were to be vicious, frantic, and in an awful hurry. This simple change in the conception of the monster was everything, completely changing the tone of the whole piece. Now zombie movies aren’t just survival movies, they’re action movies too. These zombies aren’t just vacant and hungry, they hate, they hate you specifically.
The success of 28 Days Later wasn’t just in the seismic shift it represented for the genre though, it lay in the details too. It showcased great performances from mainstay character actors like Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson and launched the careers of Naomi Harris and Cillian Murphy, the latter of whom gives a truly unforgettable performance as the bicycle courier who wakes from a coma to find himself in hell on earth. Facilitated by unforgettable scenes like him finding his parents have taken their own lives together, leaving him truly alone and severing his only hope of rediscovering his previous life, his arc from simple civilized everyman to feral commando tearing through a platoon of would-be rapist soldiers is the backbone of the film’s anarchistic nightmare. Apocalypse Now reimagined in an English stately home. In my books, neither screenwriter Alex Garland nor director Danny Boyle ever outdid their 2002 horror masterpiece.
Yet outdo it they hope to, or rather, to do it justice, as the trailer for next year’s 28 Years Later promises. There was of course one previous follow up, 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, generally regarded as a decently intense, action-heavy follow up without the original’s thematic depth or narrative coherence. Hopefully those return with Garland and Boyle who supervised the production of Weeks but did not helm it themselves, being otherwise occupied (along with Cillian Murphy) on Sunshine. The duo will return this time though, as will the original’s cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and the intervening years have given plenty of opportunities for new perspectives on the premise. The original came out in 2002, a few short months after 9/11 and the sequel followed on in the aftermath of America and Britain’s invasion of Iraq. The years since then have seen the rise of the far right, Britain’s departure from the EU, a Global financial crisis and perhaps most relevantly a real life global pandemic: lots of suitably horrific material to feed upon. Hardly a horror movie went by in 2024 without channeling anxiety around women’s reproductive rights and forced pregnancy and the trailer does indeed show a new mother (Jodie Comer) carrying her child through what looks like a kind of ritual site made of human skulls.
In universe a lot has happened as well. One of the first film’s most intriguing threads is in the idea that the infected cannot sustain themselves. These are not Romero’s more-human-than-human zombies. There is no future for them and they will inevitably fail since they cannot form the structures humanity relies upon for its survival. Dropping in on an infected Britain almost three decades on is an opportunity to explore this idea. We can see how an infection ravaged society rebuilds its communities and we get clear glimpses of this angle in the trailer with a makeshift graveyard, some kind of farm, a poster wall in what appears to be a schoolroom showing “roles in our community.” The community in question appears to be a remote island connected to the mainland by a single long bridge, a promising defensive position, yet evidently one our heroes will be, for some reason, leaving as we see multiple shots of a man (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) leading a child through woods and abandoned buildings. Perhaps this stronghold fails and the survivors are forced out to find help.
The kind of person they might meet out there seems to be represented by a group of soldiers who don’t seem to be having a great time of it, and a man (Ralph Fiennes) covered in grime, or possibly blood, leading that family through the aforementioned ritual site. Presumably this is the “bone temple” alluded to in the title of 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple. Yes, 28 Years Later is a two-parter, both have been shot already with the second half to follow soon after. That one will be directed by Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta but will also be written by Garland, presumably continuing the story. So don’t expect a full, standalone package from 28 Years Later Part One. You may however feel justified in anticipating a hell of a scary time. Ralph Fiennes looks crazy enough and the infected seem as palpably terrifying as ever. There’s the suggestion of a flashback prologue showing how civilisation first fell back in 2002, which promises to be extremely dark in tone, as does the rest of the movie. It should give the viewer the setup they need and I don’t expect familiarity with the first two films will be required, except in the sense that 28 Days Later is essential viewing for any horror fan.
Danny Boyle has had a hit or miss catalog it must be said, but he’s an undeniably talented filmmaker and besides the fact he made a hell of a movie last time, he’s also proven himself as far as legacy sequels go. T2: Trainspotting is one of the few legacy sequels that actually contributes something meaningful and builds on the original. It’s not the voice of a generation classic that the original was, but it knew it didn’t have to be, it just had to take its characters and think seriously about where they’d be in 20 years. Between Men and Civil War Alex Garland is divisive these days, but he finds in me his strongest soldier. I loved both those movies as well as Annihilation, Ex_Machina, Dredd, Sunshine and of course, the original 28 Days Later. He hasn’t bored me for a second in his entire career and gets way, way too much hate in my opinion. He’s someone who knows how to make a thrilling, thought-provoking, concept-driven genre picture.
Someone I have less faith in is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, I’ve never been a fan of his. I’ve never found him to be particularly convincing in any of his roles nor do I think he’s ever brought anything interesting to a part really. If there’s any part of this venture that I have misgivings about it’s him, but I’m willing to be proved wrong. There’s also the fact that both this and its sequel were reportedly shot entirely on smartphone. Now the original has an incredible look in large part due to how low-quality the image looks in places, giving it a feeling of rawness and authenticity a more polished look couldn’t have captured. I see why shooting on smartphone would seem like a way to recapture that kind of DIY guerrilla style, but I have had some very negative reactions to films shot on smartphone before. I will for now place my trust in Anthony Dod Mantle, a proven cinematographer and say that the images in the trailer look pretty damn good. It’s a very overcast looking feature but that seems like a pretty appropriate creative choice.
Speaking of creative choices, there’s the soundtrack. The trailer opens incongruously enough with the Teletubbies, as a room of kindergarten aged children enjoy their last moments of pre-outbreak innocence—and likely their last moments in general—before it transitions into the present day and we begin to hear “seven…six…eleven…five”. This antiquated recording from 1915 of Taylor Holmes’s feverish reading Rudyard Kipling’s 1903 poem about the hellish inescapable drudgery of the Boer war soundtracks the rest of the trailer and the affect is bone-chilling. It’s such a Boyle-Garland move tying the horrific events onscreen to Britain’s military history, counting down the passage of time and instilling a sense of mounting madness and existential dread. That more than anything is what gives me hope for this project. Just like Alien: Romulus this year, I’m not asking you to measure up to the inspired original. I just want to be scared dammit!
Directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland, and starring Cillian Murphy, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, and Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later will be in theaters on June 20, 2025.
