‘28 Years Later’ Review: An Inconsistent But Worthy Sequel

One of the best zombie franchises is back with ‘28 Years Later’, the third movie in the series that started back in 2002 with ‘28 Days Later’ and was last seen seventeen years ago with ‘28 Weeks Later’.

The film takes place, as you might have guessed, almost three decades after the original. The Rage virus has spread throughout the entire United Kingdom, leading to the islands being quarantined by the rest of the world, and the waters around Britain are patrolled by foreign navies to make sure no one–infected or not–can escape and risk spreading the disease.

The first part of the movie follows Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his twelve-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams), who live in a small community on a tidal island, protected from the infected mainland. Spike goes with his father on his first trip to the mainland to look for supplies, and give him a chance to kill his first Infected and learn first-hand the violent skills needed to survive.

This first act of the movie is pure excellence. It’s closer to the first movie than anything since; dark, brutal, terrifying. It switches seamlessly between fast-paced bloody action to a tense hideout in an old house, and never once loses sight of what’s really important here: the effect of all this on Spike, showing the brutal reality of living–or rather surviving–in this changed country. And it has a perfect relationship between father and son, as Jamie pushes Spike hard because he has to be the best he can, he has to overcome his fear, and needs to learn how to kill without thinking and live with the consequences.

We also see how much things have changed since the last movies. They made use of urban environments for a lot of their action, in large houses or the streets of London, but here we’re in a completely different setting, out in the open country. After twenty-eight years, most of the towns and cities have decayed beyond use and are too dangerous to live in, and the Infected have moved out too.

It’s interesting to see how the virus has changed and mutated over the decades. In the past, the Infected starved to death after a few weeks, unable to feed or care for themselves, but now they are evolved, splitting into different types, and even developing some kind of intelligence making them more dangerous than ever.

This is all the good stuff, but things take a downturn when, after his first successful trip, Spike returns to the mainland with his mother, looking for a doctor who he believes lives in the hills, and hopes can cure her of a debilitating illness. It’s here that you start to see the first cracks appear. Some of them I was willing to let go, just so that the story could proceed, but as it does proceed, more and more cracks begin to appear, making the movie hang by some quite slender threads.

The plot begins to swing around wildly, introducing unnecessary characters and having some scenes that don’t just jump the shark, they do backflips over it, without seeming to know where it wants to go or what exactly it wants to say, like there were two or three films being made here and they got cut up into one in editing. It’s rather like it took the best parts of ‘28 Days Later’ and the worst parts of ‘28 Weeks Later’. It has the tension, atmosphere, and slightly unnatural feel of the first movie, and the improbable plot points and dumb character choices of the second.

This isn’t helped by the fact this is not a standalone movie, but one of a potential trilogy, with the second film, ‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’, already shot and due to come out in 2026, so there’s no satisfying end for this film, but rather a set up for the next. And that’s a set up that’s so strange that you would have to see it to believe it really happened.

On the other hand, that does give me hope that, when viewed as a trilogy, it might make more sense, and also allow us to see more of Aaron Taylor-Johnson who was sorely underused in this movie. If it had kept the story set up in the first act, involving the father and son, I think it could have done something really special, but it comes off as unfocused instead.

Sure, the action and horror is great throughout and never lets up for a minute, which is just as well, as it doesn’t give much time to consider how dumb some parts of the movie are. 

As it is, ‘28 Years Later’ can be a frustrating watch. After the first tantalising trailer, I was hooked and wanted more, so my expectations were high; unfortunately, it didn’t deliver as well as I’d expected. There are large chunks that are brilliantly done, in terms of character, story, and just the simple camera work and effects, but they only highlight how low its worst points fall. 

It’s still a much better movie than ‘28 Weeks Later’, and is by no means bad or unwatchable. It’s not just a cash grab and refreshingly, it’s not drenched in nostalgia for the first movie like so many legacy sequels. But there are still a lot of moments where it loses its footing and comes close to completely falling over the edge.

With any luck its sequel will fill in some of the gaps and make it make sense, but despite all these little flaws and irritating inconsistencies, ‘28 Years Later’ is still hugely entertaining, a worthy successor to the classic ‘28 Days Later’, and the most fun I’ve had with a movie for a while now.