Film Review — 28 Years Later. Long-delayed rage sequel is both…

28 Years Later, the long-awaited, highly anticipated sequel marks the return of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland. It’s been nearly two decades since the last film, 28 Weeks Later, hit cinemas, and even longer since Boyle and Garland gave us the original — a film that helped redefine the zombie genre, single-handedly unleashing an epidemic of gritty, handheld horror. Naturally, expectations for this new film were high.

The result? Well… 28 Years Later is very different to what I was expecting. It’s a bold and ambitious film, but it’s also uneven, confusing, and at times, frustratingly bizarre. Some are going to love it for the swings it takes, while others, I’m sure, are going to call it an abomination that ruins the series. I’m somewhere in the middle.

The story, if you can believe it, takes place 28 years after the initial outbreak. Britain has long been quarantined and now sits isolated from the rest of the world. The country is a wasteland, its once-bustling communities almost entirely reclaimed by nature. What little of humanity has regressed into insular pockets, deeply fearful of the wider world, desperately clinging to civility, past glories rapidly becoming myth.

The film’s main narrative is, surprisingly, a coming-of-age story, focusing on a young boy named Spike (played by Alfie Williams in a strong debut performance) as he goes on his first hunt with his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). It’s a rite of passage, a kind of “becoming a man” tradition that seems to be a cornerstone of this society’s “new normal”.

Meanwhile Spike’s mother, played by the reliably great Jodie Comer, is stricken with a mysterious illness, an affliction that anyone who’s ever seen any kind of medical drama will probably identify fairly quickly. The family dynamic is one of the film’s strongest aspects, particularly the relationship between mother and son, which gives the story a deeply resonant emotional and philosophical core that elevates the film beyond its horror/action offering.

Unfortunately, 28 Years Later doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. Tonally, it’s all over the place: some moments work as intimate folk-horror, others as tense survival thriller, but then we get random bursts that feel jarringly out of place. The scenes that bookend the film are particularly bizarre, threatening to break the immersion, feeling like they’ve been cut in from a completely different film.

Visually, the film is a mixed bag. Boyle’s decision to shoot the film on iPhone allows for more agile filming and a style that harkens back to Day’s distinctive handheld realism. I don’t think it works. Some moments are undeniably beautiful, but much of the film looks too clean and overly stylised. All too often it feels like a tech demo — technically impressive, but I found myself wanting something more grounded and closer to the stillness and quiet horror of life in this strange new land.

The film also fumbles its attempts at social commentary. In theory, Garland’s allegorical examination of a post-Brexit Britain, touching on ideas of nationalism, generational trauma and selective memory eroded by time is fascinating, but ultimately struggles to really come together with any greater depth or meaning.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its moments. The horror and action scenes are appropriately intense, serving as a reminder of what made this series so great in the first place. Boyle serves up flashes of real beauty with sweeping shots of an undisturbed Britain that’s both haunting and oddly desirable, and the music by Scottish lo-fi group Young Fathers helps the film hit all the right emotional beats.

It’s a shame, then, that the film as a whole struggles to come together. 28 Years Later is full of ideas, some inspired, others frustrating, but I’d much rather this than a bland retread of the same old story. I respect Boyle and Garland for taking risks. This is a film of ambition and undeniable artistry, but there’s also inconsistency, indulgence, and a frustrating tendency to get lost in the weeds of its own cleverness.