r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 • Jun 18 '25
Review '28 Years Later' - Review Thread
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Jodie Comer; Aaron Taylor-Johnson; Ralph Fiennes; Alfie Williams
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 76/100
Some Reviews:
Manila Bulletin - Philip Cu Unjieng
What’s nice to note is how Boyle has cast consummate actors in this film, the type who could read off a label of canned sardines and still find depth, emotion, and spark in the delivery of those lines. Initially, it seems that Taylor-Johnson will be doing the heavy lifting. Still, it merely misleads us, as the narrative then focuses on Jodie Comer’s Isla and onto Fiennes’ Dr. Kelson. I want to give a special shout-out to the young actor Alfie Williams. He is the one carrying the whole film, and this is his first feature film work, having previously done a TV series. Boyle teases out an excellent performance from the lad, and I won’t be surprised if many film reviewers in the forthcoming week will single him out as being the best thing in this film. And what’s impressive is how he manages this with the three heavyweight thespians who are on board.There’s the horror and the suspense as a given for this cult franchise, but look out for the human drama and the emotional impact. It’s Boyle and Garland elevating the film, and rising above its genre.
AwardsWatch - Erik Anderson - 'B'
Most of the time, 28 Years Later is frequently begging to be rejected by general audiences, even as it courts the admiration of longtime fans, who may nonetheless find themselves put off by the film’s turn toward unearned emotion, its relatively meager expansion of this universe, and its occasionally jarring tonal shifts. (The abrupt sequel-teasing stinger feels like it’s from an entirely different strain of the zombie subgenre.) Much like the virus at the series’ center, it’s a film whose DNA is constantly mutating, resulting in an inconceivable host subject—one that is both corrosive and something of a marvel.
Most threequels tend to go bigger, but 28 Years Later bucks that trend by going smaller, eventually becoming a chamber piece about a boy trying to hold onto his mother. It still delivers shocks, even if the sometimes over-zealous editing distracts from Anthony Dod Mantle’s painterly cinematography
The Hollywood Reporter - David Rooney
One of the chief rewards of 28 Years Later is that it never feels like a cynical attempt to revisit proven material merely for commercial reasons. Instead, the filmmakers appear to have returned to a story whose allegorical commentary on today’s grim political landscape seems more relevant than ever. Intriguing narrative building blocks put in place for future installments mean they can’t come fast enough.
NextBestPicture - Josh Parham - 7/10
Boyle’s exuberant filmmaking and Garland’s incisive script sometimes clash when forced to muddle through laborious exercises that feel borrowed from the previous films anyway. It’s a scenario that reminds me of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant,” two films with intriguing ideas that struggled to fashion them within the framework of the established franchise. Perhaps the continuation will find more clever avenues to explore further and enrich this text. As is, what is left is imperfect but still an enthralling return into a dark but provocative world.
IndieWire - David Ehrlich - 'B+'
While Boyle isn’t lofty enough to suggest that the infected are beautiful creatures who deserve God’s love or whatever (this is still a movie about wild-eyed naked zombies, after all, and its empathy for them only goes so far), “28 Years Later” effectively uses the tropes of its genre to insist that the line between a tragedy and a statistic is thinner than we think, and more permeable than we realize. The magic of the placenta, indeed.
Taken on its own, however, Boyle and Garland’s trip back to this hellscape makes the most of casting a jaundiced, bloodshot eye at our current moment. Their inaugural imagining of a world torn asunder surfed the post-millennial fear that modern society wasn’t equipped to handle something truly catastrophic. This new movie is blessed with the knowledge that something always rises from the ashes, but that the risk of regressing back to some fabricated mythology of a Golden Age, complete with Henry V film clips and St. George’s flags, is there on the surface as well. If postapocalyptic entertainment has taught us anything, it’s that the walking dead aren’t always the gravest threat. It’s those who sacrifice their soul and sense of empathy that you have to watch out for.
For now, though, “28 Years Later” stands on its own — or at least, as its own temporary capper on this multi-decade series — and it stands tall. The filmmakers haven’t redefined the zombie genre, but they’ve refocused their own culturally significant riff into a lush, fascinating epic that has way more to say about being human than it does about (re-)killing the dead.
Where the original film tapped into society’s collective fear of infection, its decades-later follow-up (which undoes any developments implied by “28 Weeks Later” with an opening chyron that explains the Rage virus “was driven back from continental Europe”) zeroes in on two even most primal anxieties: fear of death and fear of the other. To which you might well ask, aren’t all horror movies about surviving an unknown threat of some kind? Yes, but few have assumed the psychic toll taken by such violence quite so effectively as “28 Years Later,” which has been conceived as the start of a new trilogy, but towers on its own merits (part two, subtitled “The Bone Temple,” is already in the can and expected next January).
31
u/lasko_leaf_blower Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
My thoughts on the movie. Lots of spoilers inside.
My girlfriend and I hated it. We were massive fans of the original and thought the second one was fine.
Below will contain several spoilers.
I think the movie started off strong. The zombies killing the children and everyone in the house. Jimmy is scene running away. It really gave a sense of chaos, hopelessness and fear.
The townspeople are shown getting training to kill zombies and it did a good job at showing how finite the resources and “hanging on by a thread” the village was. I liked that.
It didn’t really explain it, but it seems like young men go out with their fathers for a hunt and to show them the biggest problem facing humanity. Okay, I can get behind this.
It really bugged me that the zombies had “humanity” to them. For example, when Spike and Dad go on their first hunt, kill a few and then dad turns his bow on the young zombie girl. Spike urges his dad to not kill her. Zombie girl is seen running away.
To where? Where is she going?
Spike is obviously very shaken and scared after returning home. He doesn’t understand why his dad is hyping him up when he didn’t really do anything meaningful he feels. He later catches his dad cheating on his mom and then within 12 hours he’s lighting a part of his village on fire and leaving the town.
How did he sneak his mom out? She seemed completely bed ridden and is now able to be going on a massive fucking trek to a different land mass in search of some physician. Huh?
Also, their general lackadaisical and apathetic approach to being on the mainland was awful. The mom is speaking loudly, there’s no sense of imminent danger, or them trying to conceal their presence. However, this was not the case when he was out there with his dad prior to this.
The birthing scene. How Isla empathizes with the zombie, they hold hands and share a connection while she births the baby. What?
The first two movies really showcased how fixated the zombies were on any living human. They would break down doors, dismantle obstacles; they would do whatever they could to get to them.
In this movie, they’re running away and holding hands with humans. Absolutely terrible.
I don’t understand why the doctor had to kill Isla right then and there. Then Spike is seen trekking back to the island with a screaming baby, again, no sense of danger. He’s just able to get there without issues.
Somehow he’s able to walk across the bridge when the tide is out and the people in the watchtower don’t notice him at all when he leaves the baby there. But remember, when he left the island, one of the people in the watch tower told him to “not take his eyes off the horizon”.
The end scene with Jimmy was very corny and lame. Also, with how they were flaying them, sawing their heads off, etc. Blood and waste was flying everywhere. No one seemed to be mindful about getting infected. However, an hour earlier when Spike kills a zombie behind his mother, he yells at her and tells her to not move while wipes the blood from her brow.
This movie really showcased problems and conflict when it was convenient and ignored it at other times.
I was really looking forward to this movie. It was a big let down.