28 Years Later (2025)

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Years Later arrives carrying the weight of legacy and the curse of expectation. It’s the third chapter in a saga that helped define 21st-century horror, yet this time the rage feels different. The film is ambitious, moody, and sometimes mesmerizing, but it’s also fractured, uncertain of what it wants to say beyond “the cycle continues.”

The story picks up decades after 28 Days and 28 Weeks Later, on an isolated island where a handful of survivors have spent years believing the virus and the rest of the world is gone. Of course, it isn’t. What follows is part survival odyssey, part generational reckoning, and part metaphor for a society that never learns. It’s a big swing, and for the first forty minutes, Boyle nails it: long takes, unnerving silence, and a dread that seeps in rather than jumps out. You can feel the world’s weight pressing down on its last few souls.

Jodie Comer gives the movie its pulse. Her performance is grounded, angry, and deeply human. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Charlie Hunnam are solid, if underused, while newcomer Alfie Williams (as Spike) brings a fragile innocence that occasionally pierces through the cynicism. It’s their small, human exchanges that make the film briefly glow.

But then comes the sprawl as the film broadens its world its focus splinters. The script swings between intimate horror and franchise spectacle, trying to rekindle the stripped-down terror of 28 Days Later while also launching a new trilogy. 

Visually, Boyle hasn’t lost his touch. The handheld chaos, stark lighting, and urban decay still look incredible. But the editing is restless, and the pacing feels uneven. Moments that should devastate pass too quickly, while others linger past their welcome. The soundtrack, equal parts ambient pulse and nostalgic callback, adds texture but rarely tension.

What’s missing is clarity of purpose. 28 Years Later gestures toward ideas about surveillance, climate grief, and institutional control, but these threads dangle without payoff. It’s less about fear now, more about fatalism. 

By the end, you can feel the setup for sequels tightening its grip. Instead of closure, we get hints, promises, and world-building breadcrumbs. It’s not unsatisfying, but it is unfulfilling. A lot like watching a great director rehearse rather than perform.

28 Years Later is haunting, ambitious, and occasionally brilliant, but it never quite justifies its own return.