Film review: Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later is three sequels in one

Things come in threes. 28 Years Later is the third film in the long-running series, following director Danny Boyle’s audacious original from 2002, 28 Days Later — it gave us fast zombies! — and mostly ignoring 2007’s 28 Weeks Later. It’s also the first of a series of three new films, to be followed early next year by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and then (if the box office gods allow) by a third chapter some time thereafter. But it’s also three movies in one, which may annoy some viewers and thrill others — just as you’re getting into (or giving up on) one storyline, it suddenly shifts to another. After a brief and largely unnecessary prelude — yes, there was a zombie apocalypse once upon a time, we get it — the film opens with 12-year-old Spike and proud papa Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) heading out on a rite of passage in which the boy will kill his first zombie. Or “infected,” to use the film’s parlance. It turns out that the infectious outbreak of the first movie was contained to the British Isles, which the rest of the world simply and quickly quarantined; shades of Brexit. Spike lives in a community on an even smaller island, connected to mainland Britain by a causeway that it only passable at low tide. It’s an odd existence, part turn of the millennium, part medieval. The rest of the world may have moved on to SmartPhones (which is also what this movie was shot on) and online shopping, but the U.K. has reverted to subsistence farming and archery. Even those with pre-pandemic memories only remember dial-up. Portraits of Queen Elizabeth II still decorate civic spaces. As one of the film’s producers put it: “Britain has paused.” Spike’s quest — you can almost feel society forging new traditions, perhaps even a new religion — is shot with an almost dreamlike impressionism by Boyle. The nightmarish sense of the new world is crafted through use of a very old recording from this one — a recitation from 1915 of a 1903 poem by Rudyard Kipling, titled Boots, which you can also hear in the film’s trailer. It’s as terrifying now as on the day it was written. But the mood doesn’t last. Jamie and Spike return home, where the boy becomes disillusioned with his father’s behaviour, and convinced that the mainland may be home to a doctor who can help his mother (Jodie Comer), whose brain has become addled. Thus a new quest begins — less The Road, more road trip. Spike and his mum are aided by Erik (Edvin Ryding), a Swedish soldier who’s been accidentally marooned in this backward land. Their combined efforts eventually lead to Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who cuts a figure somewhere between Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. He even gets to deliver a soliloquy with a skull! Fiennes’ appearance so late in the film turns out to be worth the wait, as he’s easily the most interesting character in the mix, spouting Latin aphorisms one moment, shooting poison darts the next. Though it must also be said that young Alfie Williams as Spike delivers a credible melange of innocence and gravitas that helps carry the movie. Not sure what to say about the film’s final act, except that it does’t so much set up a sequel as demand one. Jack O’Connell’s character, showing up in the closing moments of 28 Years Later, arrives with a cheeky grin that might as well say: “Don’t worry; you’ll be seeing more of me soon.” We will indeed. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is scheduled to open on Jan. 16, 2026, which is — 30 weeks later. Can’t win ’em all. 28 Years Later opens June 20 in theatres. 3.5 stars out of 5

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