28 Years Later: The BRWC Review

The latest film by Danny Boyle and instalment in the now budding 28 Days Later franchise, 28 Years Later, continues Britain’s battle with the rage virus 28 years after the outbreak. However, zombie entertainment has changed dramatically since Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s first venture into the undead in 2002. The Walking Dead made zombies a weekly ritual for households across the globe. The Last of Us made hordes of infected into prestige TV. Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland brought humor to the genre, and Train to Busan gave the genre more heart than any film to date. How can Danny Boye’s return to the zombie genre bring something unique into a world sprawling with tales of re-animated corpses and fights for survival when society falls?

As the title suggests, 28 Years Later picks up almost three decades after the initial fallout. Great Britain has been quarantined from the rest of the world, left to die among the infected while the world goes on living. Spike (Alfie Williams) is a twelve-year-old boy caring for his terminally ill mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), in a community on an island just off mainland Britain. His father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is about to take Spike to the mainland for the first time and baptize him in the ways of surviving the rage virus. Father and son head into the wilds of the mainland, looking for supplies, but are stalked by a massive special infected known as “an alpha.” While the pair attempts to avoid certain death from the zombie berserkers, Spike begins a journey of self-discovery within the adrenaline of the apocalypse.

Spike and Jamie’s opening expedition is more of a preamble to the greater story in 28 Years Later. Upon their return to the community, Spike’s story becomes a story of relationships, primarily his relationship with his mother and her terminal illness. Danny Boyle does not shy away from exploring death at its most brutal and most emotional throughout the narrative. Asking viewers to “memento mori” or “remember death.” Boyle showcases death, ranging from frenetic zombie carnage to a beautiful, peaceful journey to something new. Like Ralph Fiennes’ character, Dr. Kelson, Boyle leaves room for memorializing those lost, even in a nihilistic world ravaged by the living dead.

Performances in 28 Years Later shine throughout the cast. Jodie Comer of Killing Eve acclaim gives a heartbreaking performance as Isle, filling the character with all the love and emotion of a mother dying before her child’s eyes. Isle, suffering from horrible memory loss, often loses time, creating even greater heartbreak for the young Spike. Alfie Williams never loses a step acting across titans like Ralph Fiennes. Williams gives Spike the determination needed for a character hellbent on saving his mother, yet conflicted by the sins of his father. Taylor-Johnson gives grit to Jamie and brings some of the best zombie kills in the film, including some of Boyle’s best zombie kills yet. And Fiennes is as superb as ever as the isolated Dr. Kelso, building monuments and weaving philosophy in his words within towers of bodies in what was once the great British countryside.

28 Years Later is a weirder yet appreciated choice within the larger canon of great zombie films. Spike’s journey is more than survival; it is a bloody, brutal, and no less moving coming-of-age story. From start to close, 28 Years Later is the story of Spike’s acceptance of a world that no longer exists, a world that only exists in a time before his birth. The narrative focuses on Spike’s journey to building himself into a person who can survive in the new world while honoring the lives of those who showed him love. Themes of life and death thrive throughout the story and are all told through a pounding primal score and Danny Boyle’s anarchist freeze-frame violence as zombies’ heads explode. Moments in the film feel weird, for weird’s sake. Still, all fit within the palette of Boyle’s filmmaking sensibility: the oozing style of Trainspotting with the emotional resonance of Slumdog Millionaire.

But how does Boyle and Garland bring something unique to the genre? What is left to say in the sprawling zombie apocalypse? 28 Years Later may not be what the fans expect, notably in a world that has seen the sprawling saga and spin-offs of The Walking Dead. Viewers wanting to see walls of zombies like in World War Z may not enjoy this third installment. But for those craving an artistic take on the zombie plague and a rich narrative filled with emotional nuance, 28 Years Later is among the best zombie media. It’s standalone enough for fresh audiences, but keeps the Garland-esque view of the societal collapse, combined with Boyle’s visual boldness.

The score builds on the visceral action, the characters and performances elevate an already strong narrative, and the zombies themselves are gruesome enough to make George Romero proud. 28 Years Later may not have been what the zombie film fans expected, but it is the zombie film 2025 needed. Boyle and Garland once again created a zombie classic, combining arthouse experimentation with the brutality of the rage virus, building a world with plenty of stories yet to be told, especially with two sequels already in the works. 

---

We hope you're enjoying BRWC. You should check us out on our social channels, subscribe to our newsletter, and tell your friends. BRWC is short for battleroyalewithcheese.

---

Trending on BRWC:

---

Cool Posts From Around the Web:

---

---