28 Years Later

This review contains spoilers.

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return with a decidedly different sequel that broadens the scope of the story while injecting it with unexpected emotional weight. The cast is stacked, but it’s young Alfie Williams who quietly steals the film as a 12-year-old forced into premature adulthood by his emotionally vacant father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

Stylistically, it’s unmistakably Boyle: smash cuts, whip pans, bursts of gore, sonic chaos, and bizarre non sequiturs that bleed into moments of serene stillness and striking long shots. It’s a very ’90s aesthetic to use in 2025, and while some of it works, not all of it lands. Parts of the film were shot on an iPhone, and it shows. The visuals often look flat or ugly, but that same rawness gives the action scenes a jittery urgency. It doesn’t always align with the film’s more serious thematic ambitions, but it seems to gesture at the awkward, disjointed transition from youth to adulthood.

As a zombie movie, this sequel has less to offer the genre than the previous installments. But as the start of a new chapter, it sets up something far more intriguing. The next film is already in the can and scheduled for January 2026, and I’m genuinely curious to see where it goes, particularly with Ralph Fiennes, the mysterious Bone Temple, and the cult-like group called the Jimmies. One of the film’s more startling revelations is that the so-called apocalypse wasn’t global at all. It was local. Contained. And the rest of the world moved on. That changes everything.

I have a lot of questions, like why would these people choose to stay here and live like they do (cut off a al Shyamalan's The Village). Why would a father choose this life for his son? And for the first time in a long time with this genre, I'm eager for the next one (especially since it is directed by Nia DaCosta).