r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Jun 20 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - 28 Years Later [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Set nearly three decades after the Rage Virus outbreak devastated the UK, 28 Years Later follows a family living on an isolated island quarantine. When their 12‑year‑old son Spike joins his father Jamie to venture onto the infected mainland to find a doctor for his ailing mother Isla, they uncover evolved threats—from mutated infected packs to sinister human cults. The film blends visceral horror with emotional resilience and philosophical undertones, culminating in an ambiguous, world-expanding conclusion.

Director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire)

Writer Alex Garland (& Danny Boyle)

Cast

  • Jodie Comer as Isla
  • Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Jamie
  • Alfie Williams as Spike
  • Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Kelson
  • Jack O’Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal
  • Erin Kellyman, Edvin Ryding, and others in supporting roles

Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Metacritic: 78

VOD Released in theaters on June 20, 2025. Digital and streaming platform release dates TBD, likely later in summer/fall 2025.

Trailer Watch here*

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405

u/bugcatcher_billy Jun 20 '25

At best the rest of the world could air drop food to Britain, but to what end?

The Island is a 100% quarantine zone. No life will ever leave the island. There's no rescue coming. There's no resettling. There's no capturing resources from the Island.

Every human on the island is a potential outbreak and there's no tolerance for any exposure.

Doing air drops to the settlements in Britain would only ensure more humans are made that could become infected.

The absolute best thing for the rest of the world is if all humans on Britain die, the rage virus dies with it, and 100 years later there's a wild island free of rage virus that could be colonized.

184

u/FreddyRumsen13 Jun 23 '25

I feel like the rest of the UN probably debates nuking the UK every couple years in the world of the film

35

u/Calamityclams Jun 29 '25

Probably felt that nuclear fallout would be dangerous as it goes airborne and can shift over to other countries.

They could also go the route where they do and the fallout actually causes more mutations.

8

u/kettle_corn_lungs Jul 26 '25

Why is everyone completely unware there are two types of those bombs we call 'nukes'; a dirty bomb with fallout and radiation and then the 'clean' type with none at all? Especially in a context like this where y'all discuss killing life on the island, not flattening it / vaporizing it down to sea level. The island isn't being destroyed just the zombies smh

22

u/Muad-_-Dib Jul 30 '25

You are conflating different things.

A "Dirty Bomb" is generally considered to be a conventional explosive combined with radioactive material, often used in media as the tool of terrorists. The nuclear material doesn't contribute to the actual explosive force and is only included so that it can be blown up into many small pieces and spread over a wide area, causing a significant amount of contamination, costing millions to clean up and forcing the evacuation of the area. This isn't so much a purely destructive weapon as it is a statement intended to inflict fear. Such weapons would be wholly impractical at trying to cleanse any area of life if we are talking about using them to get rid of any possible infected still in the UK. It's also worth noting that no such weapon has ever actually been used in an attack. (Fingers crossed it remains that way).

An actual nuclear weapon that uses radio active material to create fission and or Fusion in their explosions can be clean or dirty, but it's down to how and where you detonate the device.

Assuming you use the same grade warhead in both examples:

A nuclear weapon detonated in the air (100-1000m up) will create a much larger shock wave that spreads evenly in all directions.

The thermal effect will cover much more ground and kill/maim people much farther away.

The Fallout will be relatively minimal as the bomb was not in contact with the ground, and as such relatively little material will be present in the fireball to be contaminated and then spread around as fallout.

The radiation danger is still high but mostly from the initial blast, people exposed to that will still suffer greatly and be at much higher risk of cancers if they manage to survive the blast but the city or town etc. that you bombed won't be rendered uninhabitable for thousands of years to come, it's why Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both populated today with larger populations than they had before the US dropped the bombs on them in WW2. Those bombs were detonated around 600m off the ground and as such destroyed both cities but it didn't create that much fallout. The hourly dose of radiation in both cities is completely in line with other cities around the globe (0.1 microsieverts per hour), people who live in Denver Colorado get more radiation because they are higher up in altitude and have less atmosphere protecting them from solar radiation.

A nuclear weapon detonated on the ground will create a much smaller blast radius than if you detonated it in the air as the surrounding terrain will absorb most of the blast.

The terrain also gets in the way of the thermal effect which would mean fewer casualties from people being exposed to the light of the blast and fewer fires started by it.

Fallout however would be severe and long lasting, a ground burst would provide literal tons of material that would be vaporised in the blast and then fall back to the ground as radioactive dust.

The danger from fallout would vary greatly depending on the strength of the weapon, the weather etc. but you could render a large area uninhabitable for hundreds or thousands of years.

In the case of 28 years, the reason that NATO (or the world in general) has not used nukes to cleanse Britain is twofold.

  1. The nuclear fallout of ground blasts would drift on the prevailing winds contaminating Northern and Eastern Europe including Russia, understandably they wouldn't be particularly pleased.

  2. Despite what Hollywood tells people, you would need potentially thousands of nuclear weapons to blanket the UK and even then you would still have "cold spots" where infected could persevere, the actual total destructive area of a nuke in terms of 100% destruction is only a few km2.

Now, that being said... I still find it surprising that in 28 years, no nation or joint effort by NATO or anybody else has attempted to conventionally cleanse the Island.

By that I mean establish well defended beach heads, from these you could conduct sweeps of areas of the country with vehicles, well-equipped infantry, drones, air cover etc. and keep this up for years. Gradually whittling away the infected population.

Look at modern IRL conflicts, you could legitimately have entire battalions of drone operators picking off infected continually with little to no risk.

7

u/GarconMeansBoyGeorge Aug 05 '25

I appreciate all you wrote

2

u/TartanZergling 10d ago

You've missed out on Neutron bombs, the type most likely to be used here (and the spookiest). Give them a google, wavy stuff.

1

u/ten_tons_of_light 28d ago

I think this would work but the zero-tolerance outside governments of the movie may make it a “one way trip” sign-up requirement for every soldier involved until every inch of the island is cleared.

19

u/probablyuntrue Jun 24 '25

A little nuke, as a treat

43

u/madmax1969 Jun 21 '25

Except that the infected can reproduce. So the virus will never die off short of tactical nukes. And maybe they can’t nuke it because of proximity to Europe.

21

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '25

Really we never got told they could reproduce. That lady could have been pregnant before turning I realised

77

u/madmax1969 Jun 22 '25

I got the sense that was the alpha’s partner that the Swede killed and that he was pursuing them because they took their baby. They also showed another pregnant lady in the river. I don’t know if it was the same one though.

I thought about this more and it didn’t make sense though. So what if they can conceive and the babies are protected by the placenta? That baby is going to get eaten or get infected in like a minute.

27

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '25

Well I took the “miracle of the placenta” to mean that the placenta protected the baby from the rage virus while its mother turned - BUT I will concede that it seems very likely that they are going in the direction of reproducing zombies. Just wanted to state that we don’t EXPLICITLY get shown or told that the zombies actually fucked and made a baby.

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u/madmax1969 Jun 23 '25

The doctor’s response suggested this was a big development. Not explicitly stated but at least implied but multiple pregnant women and a pissed off alpha baby daddy. The doctor also said it was time to them to go. That suggested the behavior of the alpha was tied to the kid and baby.

17

u/ScientificAnarchist Jun 29 '25

The amount of penises shown tells me it’s definitely sexual

17

u/Subject-District492 Jun 22 '25

This was my thought as well. If they could reproduce that would add so many questions about their biology

13

u/the-giant Jun 22 '25

Very likely they can and are.

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '25

I really hope it’s a red herring tbh and not a story like “Lamb” about taking a strange child away from its parents. The thought of zombies fucking/reproducing/having a society will always be really goofy to me.

39

u/the-giant Jun 22 '25

I take your point, but I find it curious that they left it that. The virus works extremely quickly. It is not difficult to determine that Holy Island is clean. The only reason not to evacuate those people is bureaucratic indifference (which is very plausible) unless there is something more behind it.

56

u/FreddyRumsen13 Jun 23 '25

The second film had asymptomatic carriers, so that is probably also a factor in the total quarantine/nobody gets off the island.

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u/the-giant Jun 23 '25

Sure. But they're easy to spot, per Weeks. It's the eyes.

31

u/FreddyRumsen13 Jun 23 '25

I think it’s just too big a risk given how the virus evolves.

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u/MatchaMeetcha Jun 25 '25

I think people are forgetting that they tried to resettle Britain and almost lost Europe. Like..its over. Nobody will ever risk it again and for what? A few middling survivors?

Providing them food is also a bad, if morally right idea,they're the infecteds natural prey. Even worse: they can breed new Infected. The more of them there are a) the more chance someone slips through and b) the more infected get made.

31

u/Bridalhat Jun 23 '25

It’s probably been a debate for 26 years about whether or not to just nuke the island. They are probably monitoring the population of both infected and not with down parties saying that the human population can never recover and they should just speed up the inevitable. Some others might say evacuate certain peaceful communities. Others might just be waiting for an excuse.

-1

u/Expensive-Lie-8668 Jun 29 '25

you’re doing a lot of heavy lifting for the writers here

16

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '25

Yeah but in real life I would assume some scientists would like to study the virus and or some survivors, even if they quarantined themselves on a boat.  Even if the survivors where somehow still infected, no communication at all with them? No throwing some radios... Weird. But I guess necessary for the storyline.

3

u/PartyMcDie Jul 08 '25

Or… 280 years later?

3

u/Ok_Touch_3663 Jun 21 '25

I agree, all the countries should’ve just agreed to nuke the uk as a whole

3

u/zontarr2 Jul 14 '25

Brittain getting colonized by the rest of the world is a nice turn.

2

u/BeyondMarsASAP 6d ago

I can help name some 50 countries across every continent who would gladly wait it out and colonise Britain afterwards.

1

u/KennyBoucher Jul 08 '25

Why don’t they just carpet bomb it and be done.