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Go behind the scenes of 28 Years Later with director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland
Featurette: Sony Pictures

28 Years Later
Directed by Danny Boyle
Rated R
Spiked 20 June 2025
#28YearsLater

28 Years Later finds its power not in the horror, but in the humanity.

Holy Island Mission

28 Years Later movie poster featuring a tower of human skulls

As 28 Weeks Later (released in 2007) ends, the virus that’s torn asunder Great Britain has landed in Paris. It’s a tease indicating all of Europe is about to fall.

Alas, 28 Years Later starts with title cards that immediately reverse the course. The virus entered continental Europe all right, but it was rebuffed and Europe survived. Great Britain, however, remains a hotbed of contamination and is under a rigid quarantine. If you set foot on British soil, you’re there to stay. Forever. ‘til death you depart.

Part of this confinement is a quaint, yet rugged, little Scottish island in the Highlands. A 12-year-old boy, Spike (Alfie Williams, His Dark Materials), is about to venture out with his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kick Ass), for his first trip to the mainland. They can access mainland Scotland by foot during low tide. The father and son are given a village send-off fit for heroes.

A rule: when they’re out the gate, they’re on their own until they get back. No rescues.

Spike’s mission for his historic first visit is to make his first kill. Of a zombie.

That’s the setup, but there’s a fundamental feature to the 28 series that goes in a totally unexpected direction and elevates this third installment into something strangely special.

Fail We May, But Go We Must

There are two core facets to the first two 28 movies: a striking visual style and a strong relationship that drives the bulk of the action. 28 Years Later is no different. With Boyle back at the helm, reuniting with screenwriter Alex Garland for the first time since Sunshine in 2007, it’s clear Boyle’s having fun cutting loose while making the movie (his first feature since Yesterday in 2019).

And there is a very strong relationship at the story’s center, but hardly of the expected variety. It’s not romantic. It’s not sexual, like the charged relationship between Cillian Murphy and Naomie Watts in 28 Days Later. It’s not dark like the challenging relationship between a father and his children in 28 Weeks Later.

It’s the bond between a mother, Isla (Jodie Comer, Free Guy), and her son, Spike.

With this relationship, 28 Years Later goes to some surprising places and it goes there with a really sensitive style that contrasts sharply with all the gore and even full-frontal nudity of feral zombies giving birth and running wild in more ways than one.

This central relationship sets 28 Years Later apart not only in this series, but in the pantheon of horror movies. It’s deeply, surprisingly affecting. Oddly powerful.

And there’s still another turn in that vein involving Isla cradling a baby born to a zombie, but unaffected by the virus. At the same time, Dr. Kelson is seen stoking his fiery furnace as he prepares a skull for display.

Doctor Who?

Dr. Kelson. Interesting chap. When he first appears, his skin is a deep orange tone. But it’s not a failure of the film’s color correction. As part of his polite, formal introduction to Isla and Spike, he explains he’s painted himself in iodine because it’s a superb prophylactic. It repels zombies likes flies steering clear of bug spray.

Kelson is played by Ralph Fiennes, who is a great actor, without question. And he’s appeared in many high-profile series, including James Bond and Harry Potter. But how could he possibly fit into a zombie movie, particularly when the trailers have him decked out in orange paint and looking like an Oompa Loompa? Well, it turns out he fits in really well as Dr. Kelson. Actually, the movie comes alive when he enters the picture.

And, given Kelson’s explanation of his appearance, it all makes sense after all.

As teed up by Jamie, Kelson sounds like something of a threat. Maybe a Col. Kurtz type, a madman stoking a massive bonfire off on the horizon.

But Spike seeks him out. His mother’s not well and she needs help. Neither mom nor son understand what’s causing her debilitating condition.

The Killing Fields

The dynamics between Kelson, Isla and Spike are mind-blowing, not merely in the context of a zombie film, but in how a remarkably challenging topic is so sweetly handled amid all the horror.

Kelson’s created a skeleton forest intended to honor those who have fallen to the virus. It’s reminiscent of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, which features a towering collection of human skulls representing all the people brutally taken down by Pol Pot in a horrible, incomprehensible genocide. Such a tower is set in the center of Kelson’s boneyard.

Amid the gruesome bloodshed, Kelson not only brings humanity, he brings some humor. "Alas, poor Erik," he says, while holding the skull of a Swedish soldier who chose poorly. Of course, it’s a clever little play on Shakespeare’s extremely quotable Hamlet and the line, "Alas, poor Yorick."

Erik was a confrontational Swedish army soldier who was stranded after his boat crashed. His dialogue with Spike helps bring home the situation: Spike has never seen a smartphone before. He’s unaware of what’s happening outside his ultra-insular environment. Even a joke about the Swedish solider and "Scotch on the rocks" falls flat with the kid — and it has nothing to do with his age. It’s his isolation. The outside world continues to turn, it’s Spike’s world that’s stuck in a moment.

Memento Mori

As part of the smorgasbord of tonal shifts from the gruesome (a giant feral zombie named Samson by Kelson tears humans apart with his bare hands, pulling heads off shoulders, with bits of spine still dangling from the skull), to the dramatic, to the adventurous, to the introspective, and to the oh so sweet, the movie ends with a rather wacky turn involving a bunch of Scots in track suits.

One, who identifies himself as Jimmy, is wearing an upside-down cross around his neck. Turns out (based on the end credits, at least), everyone in his group is named Jimmy and some brandish surnames that won’t be repeated here. Around this time with the Jimmys is when that familiar, haunting, twangy theme music finally comes into play.

Setting aside the remarkable handling of the Isla/Spike relationship, perhaps the biggest surprise in 28 Years Later is that it’s not particularly geared toward any sort of statements on current affairs and global politics. Garland certainly went down that path with Civil War and tried to shed light on the horrors of combat in Warfare.

Perhaps it’s just as well. Keeping the focus on the basics of the human condition provides all the gravitas this movie needs.

Having moved the series out of the cityscapes and into natural landscapes, the series itself experiences a rebirth and it ends with nothing less than a tease that — yeah — this series might continue after all.

And indeed it will; 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has already been filmed, with Nia DaCosta (The Marvels) at the helm. It’s set for release in 2026, with a potential third installment to follow in a 28 Years trilogy.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.