28 YEARS LATER
MOVIE REVIEW

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
28 DAYS LATER SEQUELS, PREQUELS, & REMAKES 28 YEARS LATER - 2025 USA Release: June 20, 2025 Danny Boyle, DNA Films, British Film Institute (BFI), TSG Entertainment, Decibel Films, Québec Production Services Tax Credit, Columbia Pictures Rating: USA: R

I really like 28 DAYS LATER. So much that I bought the DVD, then later the Blu-Ray.

High Definition is as good as its ever going to look, btw. Danny Boyle largely shot it on 8mm video tape, at 576i lines of resolution, on an outdated (even then) Canon XL - 1. It was the best Prosumer camera made until 2000. Danny fitted it with the best lens he could get for his budget. But yeah, we're not even talking 1400x720 HD, let alone 1920x1080 SHD.

The sound was great but it visually looked like crap, which was the point. Danny wanted his movieto have a raw "home video" look over a polished, clean, Panavision appearance. As if each scene was recorded by someone who happened to be standing there with their consumer video camera and caught the action.

And it worked, of course. 28 DAYS LATER still has that "You Are There" Observational Cinema vibe to it.

So here we are, 23 years later, and original Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, present us with their magnum opus, 28 YEARS LATER.

As with the original, Danny goes for a raw look by shooting nearly the entire movie on a smart phone. In this case, an Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max.

It begins in the past. Children, huddled together in a room, are watching Telletubbies on TV. They are trying to stay calm but are obviously frightened and trying not to show it. The fact that desperate adults keep opening the door, bringing in another child and telling them to stay quiet isn't working.

Soon the noise of the infected are heard and screaming soon follows, as does the bloodshed. Only one child escapes.

This was the time of the infected.

Infected because 28 DAYS LATER was not a zombie movie about the dead coming back to life, but a far more believable tale of a lab created plague, released on the world by Animal Rights activists, who were the first to die in their sanctimony and stupidity.

The infection doesn't kill you, it enrages you. The infected kill you. The virus hypes up the aggression center of the brain and there is no cure for it, not even 28 YEARS LATER.

So here we are on this earth's future. Like Romero-style zombie movies, the infected want to kill you, though not necessarily eat you. If, during the course of the attack, you become infected (which is nearly instantaneous), the infected stop attacking you. You become one with the herd.

Over the credits and for long after is the sing-song voice of someone spouting poetry. It sounds like an old recording and the voice of the woman is stern, old, and militaristic1.

In this future the rest of the world survived because it isolated the British Isle, abandoning it to an eternal quarantine. There is a tinier island of uninfected all white humans2 called Lindisfarne, far apart from the mainland. During low tide it is connected to the mainland of England by a narrow causeway: thus Lindisfarne is a "tidal island".

We see how people live on this island and come to Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson: THE ILLUSIONIST, KICK-ASS, CHATROOM, SAVAGES, CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER, GODZILLA [2014], AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, TENET, NOSFERATU [2024], KRAVEN THE HUNTER). Jamie cooks breakfast for his 12 year old son, Spike (Rocco Haynes: STARVE ACRE). Spike knows how precious food is and tries to give some of his breakfast back to his Father, who refuses, insisting his son have it.

Instead, Jamie takes some of his food up to his Mother, in his parent's bedroom. Her name is Isla (Jodie Comer: THIRTEEN) and she suffers from some kind of disease that throws her into bouts of screaming madness. One moment she's relatively sane. The next she's off her rocker. Jamie and Spike do their best to care for her but every day they must leave to scavenge, hunt, and fish.

But now, after years of Spike being trained to hunter and learning, along with othe other island children, to shoot for only the kill zones - heart and head - it's time for Spike to become a man.

What does that mean? Crossing the causeway and low tide. Why? To survive and kill an Infected. This is James Rite of Passage.

First Jamie and Spike must pass through the gate where a special watch protects Lindisfarne from any infected CRAZIES (another plague film, also originally directed by George A. Romero) that may try and come across the causeway at low tide.

Off they go, Merry mishaps occur again, and they make it back.

This is the theater quality camera that shot the movie. The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max

In truth, Spike nearly got himself killed a couple of times. As it turns out, he's a few years too young for Rite of Passage, but Pop is concerned that Isla may not be around to see her son as a man.

So then there's a party to honor Spike's coming of age. Everyone is happy, but Spike is uncomfortable at how his Pop is exagerating his achievements. Spike is ashamed of himself.

Then this happens, then that happens, then something else happens, and none of it is resolved. Watching 28 YEARS LATER, I began thinking about the major motion picture that torpedoed Mark Hamill's acting career just as Star Wars put him on top. A movie called SLIPSTREAM. Like that movie, 28 YEARS LATER has scene after scene of set pieces, all developing into what could be an interesting story, but are left behind just as they get interesting.

The village and how they govern themselves, who these many individuals are, has a story that could take up an entire movie: Certainly more of this movie.

The Island's Watch, those who mind the rough wall and gate to the causeway are certainly an intriguing concept worth more exploring: Certainly more of this movie.

What possible point they have to cross that causeway, beyond these Right of Passage action. I'll grant them their goofy culture. Many cultures are riddled with flea-bitten nonsense that does little if any good, but generally won't destroy the society as a whole that practices it.

The difficulty the Watch has with the range of their weapons against a powerful and enraged foe that could quickly destroy the population (as they did to the British Isle mainland), however, is a suicide waiting to happen. They must have had close calls in the past, as Jamie speaks to Spike as if handing down experienced, traditional knowledge, learned from confrontations in the past.

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
Why the technology of Lindisfarne is such a screwball mix of modern tech and primitive, nearly stone age tools is bizarre, and that could be an interesting story too.

After all, the people of the island have electricity, so they have the 21st century power generators that supply it and 28 years of them knowing how to, not simply refuel them, but maintain and repair them. Which means metal working. They have tons of lightbulbs which means that, after 28 years, they have the technology to make new ones to replace the old ones. Again, involved industry that's at least up to the late 20th century. Yet something as 14th century archaic as mixing gunpowder and a paper or metal stamped cartridge for guns eludes them? How can they possibly have one without the other?

Yet here they go using cumbersome to load crossbows as they face the danger of the Infected running toward them, as the uninfected contend with a limited number of arrows in their quivers.

Once you've shot an infected you don't dare retrieve your arrow, the infection from their blood might transmit. Yet we see that each handmade arrow is capped with a metal tip, so they're able to shape and press metal, which means they have the ability to make bullets and their casing: Complete cartridges. Mixing gunpowder is a cinch. Humans have been doing that centuries before gun cartridges.

Anyway, different stuff happens, it seems the movie is over, then a new chapter, which also goes nowhere, begins. Then that chapter peters out and another adventure begins, then that winds down. There's a lot of walking. A lot of hiding. Sneaking about, some sleeping. Some running. More walking, and nothing with any resolution, then another chapter begins - The End.

Don't get me wrong, like the disastrous SLIPSTREAM, we will meet interesting characters like Dr. Kelson, played by renown, award winning actor Ralph Fiennes (RED DRAGON, WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, HARRY POTTER, THE HURT LOCKER, CLASH OF THE TITANS). Then again, even Uwe Boll gave us great actors.

There is nothing about 28 YEARS LATER that I could call a "Stand alone movie.

Have you seen George Romero's brilliant NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and DAY OF THE DEAD? Each one was propelled by the holocaust of a zombie apocalypse. Each one told a different story, in a different place, with a different group of survivors.

You don't have to watch them in order. You can start with Day go to Night, and end with DAWN, and it remains all good. Like the Rage infected, or the Xenomorph Alien, or the Predator Alien, the Zombies are only the inciting incident. The story is with the survivors.

There's no story in 28 YEARS LATER. It's all beginnings, some middles, and no resolution.

Columbia Pictures is actually hoping that will be good enough for when they release the next sequel in the traditional studio dump month of January, 2026.

The fact that they are releasing the sequel in January already tells me that Columbia knows the next sequel will not be good enough.

As for 28 YEARS LATER, 2 Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2025 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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