’28 Years Later’

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland reunite in a film that is anything but a legacy sequel. 28 Years Later asks audiences not to run to the next installment but to remember and mourn those who we lost. Boyle’s latest is an emotional, deeply earnest film that explores the finality of death that pushes the boundaries of filmmaking with some of the best visuals of the year. 28 Years Later is anything but what you’d expect and it’s all the better for it.

Danny Boyle is one of our most interesting filmmakers with such a wide range of films exploring such different emotions and themes but 28 Days Later has always been one of his best works for me. As someone who is not a zombie person, despite being a huge horror fan, what Boyle and writer Alex Garland did with the first film starring Cillian Murphy brought new life into the zombie genre. They weren’t undead, they were infected by a virus that felt all too real. It was a frenzied story of morality that led to excepting an unavoidable fate, death. Outside of how impactful the story of 28 Days Later was, the filmmaking stretched the boundaries of what you expected from not just a zombie film but any film. The texture, erratic camera movement and kinetic editing inserted you into the world of the film; it almost felt as if you had found footage of the story and were watching it unfold. With 28 Years Later, it feels Boyle and his team have done it again. While it’s not the grainy, Canon XL1 digital video camera footage, Boyle and his cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, primarily use an iPhone 15 Max (with insane camera rigs). The result is unbelievably stunning, it’s genuinely the best a film has looked on screen all year. The greens are so vibrant, the flowers pop, and it feels hallucinatory, chaotic, and almost ethereal, perfectly balancing the story Boyle and Garland are telling. It’s awe-inspiring.

28 Years Later follows Spike (Alfie Williams) and his family that live on an island, Holy Island, sheltered from the rage-infected from the mainland. The village is almost an oasis in trapped within a sea of horror as it’s surrounded by water and is only accessible during low tide, when a causeway connected to the mainland is visible. We stay on the island long enough to feel slightly unnerved by the cultlike tendencies and religious undertones. Spike’s father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is taking his young son to the mainland for the first time for him to kill his first infected. While the young boy is thrilled to be seeing the mainland for the first time, Boyle and Mantle create a lush yet nightmarish visual that the mainland is full of pulsating horrors waiting for the father and son. The world has evolved in this installment with various types of infected, with the quick, freshly infected back but also slow, crawling larger creatures that are almost silent as they stalk their prey and naked, twitchy, quick ones led by Alphas. The Alpha and his pack curtail their journey, they make a stunning escape back to their island for safe haven. Once home, Spike unveils an ugly truth about his father and after being pushed to be more mature and take ownership, Spike takes his bedridden mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), as he’s heard maybe a doctor that lives on the mainland can help her. As soon as Spike and Isla are back on the mainland, visually, it’s so different from what Boyle and Mantle did the first time we were on the mainland. While it’s still palpable there are infected surrounding them, there’s almost a fairytale, ethereal gleam as it feels we’re seeing the search for hope and healing, not just a quest for death. The entire quest with Isla and Spike feels almost like a daydream in this world full of death and decay. Their almost The Wizard of Oz esque venture is full more of hope and life versus simply just the infected. Soldiers who help them along the way to infected who deliver the gift of life, their quest is anything but just a run from the infected who seek to kill them.

When we finally arrive to Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), it’s breathtaking and while not one moment of time on our way to him felt wasted, it feels a new life takes over the film. Nothing from his storyline feels to push anything other than what this franchise has always been about at its core, the acceptance of death. 28 Years Later is a tender reflection in comparison to its counterparts asking you not to run from death but stop and grieve for those who have not survived. It’s incredibly moving and an entirely earned. The concept of “memento mori” earnestly lands as you feel not just an emotional connection to these characters, specifically Spike in this coming-of-age tale, but it speaks to the larger conversation of life carries on despite the chaos consuming the rest of the world. 28 Years Later isn’t an exercise of post-apocalyptic adventure but diving into the humanity that lives on when push comes to shove.

Boyle and Garland reuniting in a film that is anything, but a legacy sequel feels not just special but one of the cinematic events of the year. 28 Years Later asks audiences not to run to the next installment but to remember and mourn those who we lost. Boyle’s latest is an emotional, deeply earnest film that explores the finality of death that pushes the boundaries of filmmaking with some of the best visuals of the year. 28 Years Later is anything but what you’d expect and it’s all the better for it.

Grade: A

Oscars Prospects:
Likely: None
Should be Considered: Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Make-up & Hairstyling

Where to Watch: In Theaters