28 Years Later review: Danny Boyle’s zombie horror is best film of 2025 | Films | Entertainment
Back in 2002, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland stunned the world with their British horror masterpiece 28 Days Later.
Cillian Murphy’s Jim woke from a coma to find London deserted apart from the occasional fast zombie and fellow apocalypse survivor.
The cult classic spawned a less well-received sequel in 28 Weeks Later without the original director and screenwriter, but now they’re finally back with the first in a trilogy of 28 Years Later movies.
Set in 2030 after the 2002 Rage virus outbreak, this time, the action leaves the English capital and heads north to Holy Island, aka Lindisfarne, off the Northumberland Coast.
In a small tribal village of Geordies, protected by rickety wooden walls and a causeway to the mainland, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie lives with his sick wife Isla (Jodie) and their 12-year-old son Spike, who has never left the island. Taking only bows and arrows, the father takes his son back to England on a scavenger hunt for his first kill, facing plenty of infected and some strange survivors. Impressively shot mainly on iPhone 15 Pro Max cameras for that earthier look made famous by the original film’s digital standard definition, what follows is easily the best film of the year so far.
28 Years Later is a zombie horror, so expect the same bloody, brutal visuals of the previous two entries, this time with variants of the infected, from bloated fat forest crawlers to naked, jacked alphas sprinting with giant swinging prosthetics for good measure. Yet just like 28 Days Later, amid the thrills and gasps is the humanity of Garland’s characters in yet another brilliantly penned script – something 28 Weeks Later didn’t quite grasp. It’s a story of a father raising his son to be a man amid the chaos of a dangerous world, it’s about facing life and death, and it’s also very much about England. The film is littered with British imagery, from shots of medieval troops in old movies firing arrows, to a flaming St George’s flag and a cult of eccentric back-flipping characters all dressed like the infamous Jimmy Savile. Although Jack O’Connell’s role as Sir Jimmy Crystal won’t be fully explored until the second film, The Bone Temple, which comes out in January, with Cillian Murphy reprising Jim from 28 Days Later.
As for the cast, Alfie Williams is stand-out impressive as the boy Spike, learning the hard truths of the brutal world he lives in, while Taylor-Johnson and Comer convincingly bring all the family angst of a kitchen sink drama. Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes co-stars as an eccentric iodine-covered doctor who collects the bones of the dead to remind us all that we will all die. Their acting chops alongside Boyle’s direction, Garland’s script and Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography will leave you feeling somewhat sledgehammered by the end of this epic rollercoaster, one that doesn’t just savagely scare, but also makes you smile at the small relatable human moments and even sob in one tear-jerking scene. We cannot wait for the rest of the trilogy after this entry, which might just surpass the 2002 original.
28 Years Later is out in UK cinemas this Thursday.
