Movie Review | 28 Years Later

28 Years Later (Photo – Sony Pictures)

When did zombies go global?

28 Years Later
Directed by Danny Boyle – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1942) kept the genre rooted in Haiti, but George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) shifted the carnage to Pennsylvania and added an apocalyptic edge. Now comes 28 Years Later, the third in the 28 Hours Later triad, a film that puts its own twist on the franchise.

You might call it the zombie pastoral.

In the film, directed by Danny Boyle, the zombie plague has been contained within the British Isles, quarantined from the rest of the world. A narrow swath of land and a high gate separate the last outpost of Anglo-Saxon survivors from naked predators.

In an ill-advised tradition, Spike, a 12-year-old boy, ventures out on his first zombie hunt with his father. This is apparently a rite of passage, though in view of the way Spike and his father barely survive, perhaps one that needs rethinking.

After they return to safety by the skin of their teeth, Spike wishes to venture out again, this time with his ailing mother, in hopes of finding a cure from a renegade doctor who survives among the zombies for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me.

Yet the rustic quality of the humans’ village evokes some folksy BBC series, full of colorful country characters, while the vicious world beyond its gates has the beauty of a prime vacation spot, if you overlook the local inhabitants.

It is, weirdly, a beautiful film to watch.

Sure, it’s genre, but Boyle brings to the film a technique of fast cutting, digital manipulation, and other visual tricks whose artistry sustains a mood of unease or dread, even amid the Edenic landscapes.

He also brings in Ralph Fiennes, who, covered in zombie-repellent iodine, plays the renegade doctor. Maintaining a pile of human skulls in the shape of a Christmas tree, Fiennes’s character suggests a Hamlet gone completely mad. The decapitated skull of a stranded soldier, who had helped Spike and his mother, prompts a brief reference to the Yorick soliloquy.

The character and casting of Fiennes are perfect, lending a note of gravitas to the film. He instructs Spike on the meaning of memento mori—“remember we must die”—though, given the preceding mayhem, it feels like a redundant lesson.

Of course, zombie movies aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for those looking for shocks with a touch of class, 28 Years Later delivers.

> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regal Paseo, IPIC Theaters, Regal UA La Canada, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, and Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance.