{"id":12190,"date":"2025-06-21T22:44:32","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T02:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12190"},"modified":"2025-07-26T13:31:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:31:25","slug":"28-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/06\/21\/28-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"28 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"28 Years Later<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, graphic nudity, language, brief sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Danny Boyle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Alex Garland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Young Fathers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 20, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Edvin Ryding, Edvin Ryding, Christopher Fulford, Amy Cameron, Stella Gonet, Jack O\u2019Connell.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

FOREWORD: If it feels like there\u2019s more story to tell with 28 Years Later<\/strong>, you\u2019re right. A sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is scheduled to be released next January.<\/p>\n

\u00a028 Years Later<\/strong>, the long-awaited three-quel to 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007), is finally here after a long wait (nearly 20 years!). Was it worth it? I say YES! The guys who gave us the first movie, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, are back at the helm. They deliver a genuinely thrilling, gnarly, world-building \u201czombie\u201d movie that gleefully subverts the genre by not remaking the original. Instead, it tells a different kind of story, one that combines zombie action with a boy\u2019s coming-of-age in a decimated world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the film\u2019s opening sequence, a group of terrified children watch an episode of Teletubbies while the initial Rage Virus outbreak of \u201902 finally finds its way to their house. A boy named Jimmy is the only one who gets away from the infected. He makes his way to his father\u2019s church. His dad, the vicar, believes it\u2019s God\u2019s final judgment. He gives his son a crucifix necklace and tells him to get out of there before being overtaken by the crazed attackers. It doesn\u2019t have anything to do with the main plot, but it does come up again at the end so don\u2019t dismiss it.<\/p>\n

\u00a028 years later, the UK remains under quarantine. It\u2019s the only country still affected by the virus; it\u2019s been wiped out in other parts of the world. A small community of uninfected survivors lives in a village on an island connected to the mainland by a causeway. They only venture there to scavenge and hunt zombies. The latter is a rite of passage for the boys of the village. 12YO Spike (Williams, A New Breed of Criminal) is taken there by his father Jamie (Johnson, Bullet Train) to make his first kill. They run into some trouble with an \u201cAlpha\u201d, the most powerful of the infected ones, but eventually make their way home, but not before spotting a mysterious fire in the distance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After arriving home, Spike learns the origin of the fire is a man named Ian Kelson (Fiennes, Conclave), a doctor who everybody\u2019s afraid of. The boy sees him as a good thing. His mother Isla (Comer, Killing Eve) is seriously ill. There are no doctors in the village. Spike decides to take his mom to see the doctor in hopes that he can cure her. It\u2019ll be a perilous journey with no guarantees, but he\u2019s willing to take the risk.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The zombie kills in 28 Years Later<\/strong> are fast and fierce and come with plenty of splatter. The arrows, father and son\u2019s weapon of choice, fly fast and hit hard. The kills committed by the zombies are nicely bloody. Heads are literally ripped off. In the 28 years since the virus first hit, the zombies have changed. There are different types like the slow, fat ones that crawl on the ground and the running kind with a lot of aggression. The only problem is that the attack scenes are still wildly overedited. It would be nice to get a better look at the action and carnage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Boyle, with the help of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, does something different in 28 Years Later<\/strong>. He intercuts some scenes with archival footage from British war films. It\u2019s effective in that it shows war in different forms. One of the freakiest things in the movie is something we heard in the trailer. As Jamie and Spike trek across the mainland, the Rudyard Kipling poem \u201cBoots\u201d, as recited by Taylor Holmes in a 1915 reading, is heard in voiceover. The poem is about soldiers marching during the Second Boer War. Its repetitive nature is a perfect fit for the tone of the film.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in 28 Years Later<\/strong> is very good. Williams, in his first big role, shows great promise. He doesn\u2019t overplay the na\u00efve, innocent kid card. He shows a toughness mixed with vulnerability that would elude most child actors. Johnson is also good as the father who isn\u2019t exactly a role model. Spike discovers a secret he\u2019s keeping and it pretty much destroys their relationship. Comer has some great scenes as the ailing mother, a kind woman who fluctuates between hallucinations and moments of lucidity. Edvin Ryding (A Life\u2019s Worth) does a fine job as a Swedish soldier Spike and his mother encounter during their journey. Fiennes commands every scene he\u2019s in, not playing up the screwy stuff too much.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have to say the final scene is totally bizarre and out of left field, but I LOVE IT! It sets up the next movie which I truly hopes comes out when they say it will. As I understand it, they shot it back-to-back with 28 Years Later<\/strong>. We\u2019ll have to see.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As for 28 Years Later<\/strong>, it\u2019s a damn good horror movie. It\u2019s freaky, fascinating and fun. It takes itself seriously enough without getting too bogged down with statements about the current state of affairs in the world. If I want that, I\u2019ll turn on the news.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Years Later (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, graphic nudity, language, brief sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Danny Boyle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Alex Garland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Young Fathers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 20, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Edvin Ryding, Edvin Ryding, Christopher Fulford, Amy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/28-Years-Later-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12193,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12190\/revisions\/12193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}