Forget Trainspotting or the octuple-Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s best film is 2002’s edgy, grimy, frenzied zombie shocker 28 Days Later. Fact. Stat, whatever you like to call it. Or it was, because 28 Years Later – wilder, weirder, darker, bloodier – is even better. Although opinions will be divided on this claim.
Boyle and writer Alex Garland (he’s having a purple patch, what with directing 2024’s very good Civil War and this year’s exceedingly good Warfare) are reunited again after skipping the inferior 28 Weeks Later – and they’ve hurled everything fans could possibly have wished for at this third stand-alone instalment in the series. Apart from Cillian Murphy, perhaps, a notable absentee.
The prologue is a stark, raving amuse-bouche of what’s coming your way for the next 115 minutes. A group of young children are watching the Teletubbies (nicely dating the era) when someone infected with the Rage virus smashes their way in, tearing the party to shreds, blood splattering across Tinky Winky and pals on the screen.
Young Jimmy manages to escape, racing to the chapel where his priest father is having full-on zombie love-in. As bodies are shredded, the frenetic, jump-cut, sped-up movement of the infected familiar from the first film is happily still there. As is a nod to the low-res camerawork (this was shot on an iPhone). It’s not the last you’ll hear of Jimmy either.
Rip forward 28 years and plague-ridden Britain is quarantined from the rest of Europe (Boyle was keen for a Brexit reference, apparently). Twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) is living in a virus-free community on Holy Island, connected to the no-go mainland by a causeway at low tide.
Dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the nurturing warrior type, while mum Isla (Jodie Comer) is bed-ridden with a mysterious illness that’s unhinging her mental faculties. In her Geordie lilt, Comer does a delicious torrent of C-words.
With the internet and much of the modern world wiped out, the islanders have had to go back to primitive basics. Gone are guns, back come bows and arrows – the use of this weaponry is exposited rather heavily with archive footage from what resembles Laurence Olivier’s Henry V of horseback soldiers firing off volleys.
Spike’s right of passage is to brave it across the causeway to the mainland with his dad to slaughter some infected. Or course, it goes tits-up, including a gruesome, torso-carved reminder of the lurking presence of “Jimmy”.
As father and son make an epic bid to extricate themselves, the optics make a sudden shift in tone. With the Milky Way glistening overhead, and ethereally light swirling around the action, it’s as if James Cameron had muscled Boyle off the camera. Still, it looks incredible.
Boyle and Garland pack a heck of a lot into under two hours, which you really wouldn’t want spoiled. Suffice to say, Jamie isn’t the hero dad he’s cracked up to be and, Spike realises, mum needs to be cured. Cue freak-lord Ralph Fiennes, who makes Donald Trump’s orange glow look positively underlit. Fiennes also has a way with bones and skulls, making for a rare but cheeky one-liner. It’s not the funniest line though; that comes with a wicked little dig at the current ubiquity of lip fillers.
There’s ruby-tinged gorging on human offal galore and a particularly squeamish birth scene, which the hardcore will be thrilled with. There’s a nostalgic blow-up in a Happy Eater (yes!) and even a tribute to Sycamore Gap. I told you they’ve stuffed this film full to the brim. There are even themes of toxic masculinity and assisted dying for those looking for zeitgeisty triggers.
At heart, this is the coming of age story of Spike, but it’s also the opener of a trilogy (Boyle will miss out the next one again before returning for the final instalment). And if, five minutes before the closing credits, you already feel like you’ve been to hell and back, the finale teasing what’s next is purple-tracksuited (international code for bonkers cult guru) ninjas on acid mayhem of the highest order.
It's that time, halfway through the year, when enough movies have been seen to risk the phrase “best film of the year so far”. And right on cue, here we have it. Nothing in 2025 has been as good as this supercharged, shuddering blast.
28 Years Later is in cinemas from June 19
