28 Years Later (2025)

28 Years Later is my most anticipated film of 2025. I came to the 28 universe if you can call it that quite late cause gory horror wasn't my thing until quite late in life. I really like 28 Days and think that it deserves the praise that it got. It is perhaps Danny Boyle’s best film if not in his top 3. I quite like 28 Weeks Later even though it's not a patch on ‘Days’. 28 Years Later follows the growing recent trend of long time sequels. This is the first of an intended trilogy, we are getting Part 2 in January 2026 and on the basis of this film we will get the third one probably in late 2026. 

The film starts off with the Teletubbies playing and it reminded me of Warfare (co-directed by Alex Garland) where the soldiers are dancing to ‘Call on Me’ and it was that film saying that this was about as upbeat as the film would get (which was true) and I felt like the Teletubbies was Danny Boyle’s version of that. The film says straight away that they are going to pull no punches because about 8 kids are killed by the infected. Only one manages to survive and this was the first of many times that I found myself saying ‘bloody hell’. 

The film centres around Spike (played by Alfie Williams) who along with his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are on a little island with other residents that can only be reached by a causeway. Whoever thought that Alfie Williams was the right person to play such an important role deserves a huge bonus because he is brilliant. When he has to place his recently dead mother’s skull on the big pile it was such a sad moment and if you dont feel something for him then you might need to check for a pulse. He has to carry the second half of the film and when Spike is being trained to go hunting but he is very young and doesn't quite make it work but by the end of the film he has grown and becomes better with the bow and arrow. I have never been the biggest fan of Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I don't think he’s terrible but he just seems to pick terrible films (i’m looking at you Kraven the Hunter). He starts off quite likeable at the beginning as he is trying to teach his son how to survive in a world that must be quite scary and the film then makes you change your opinion on him when he sneaks off with another woman and then strikes Spike when he tries to stand up to him. He doesn't feature in the second half so it will be interesting to see where his story ends up.  His mother Isla (played by Jodie Comer) is not well and spends the first half of the film in bed and its the second half where Comer shows how good she is. The role isnt the strongest but Comer makes it feel genuine and you feel more sad for Spike when she keeps calling her son Dad. I am slightly disappointed by the fact that she doesn't make it to the end of the proposed trilogy but it does serve as the main reason why Spike grows up and becomes a man even though only a few weeks have passed by the end of the film.

Ralph Fiennes is very good as Dr Kelson. He is painted pretty much like a certain US President and it did generate some giggles in my screening. He is portrayed by the islanders as a madman but he is anything but and he has built the skull display that you see in the trailer. He gets very little screen time but it is suggested that he survives so he may appear in future instalments. I hope so because Fiennes is fun to watch as Kelson and his skills might be useful to the inhabitants of the island.  Edvin Ryding plays Erik who is literally introduced so that after a few minutes he is killed and his skull is ripped from his body. He is a little bit annoying for the brief time that he is on screen but at least his death is quite good.

It is worth pointing out Chi Lewis-Parry who plays Alpha who seems to be the main villain of the film and is way more powerful than most infected and he can only be stopped with a tranquilliser. It’s a performance with no dialogue yet is very menacing. He is responsible for a couple of quite gory deaths and I do mean gory because he rips people's skulls off their bodies with their spinal column still attached. 

The film ends with the young boy from the beginning now a grown up and we get a bizarre fight scene which did remind me of A Clockwork Orange and we have seen references to Jimmy throughout the film and he is clearly going to feature quite heavily in the next one (maybe the third). This is the second performance from Jack O’Connell in 2025 that I have thought was really good. Unlike Sinners, he is only in this briefly and I cant wait to see what O’Connell does in the next one. 

I think some people might be disappointed with the fact there is no Cillian Murphy (even though he is credited as an Executive Producer). Danny Boyle has said in repeated interviews that Murphy isn't in this film and whilst there was always the chance that Boyle and Alex Garland were trying to do a bluff but Murphy is definitely not in it and that works in the films favour because it means that we can focus on new characters and by the time that he does appear then we have characters that we care about and are interested in. Overall I really liked this film. I don't know whether it's better than Days because it was made at a different time but this is definitely one of my favourite films of the year. I had high expectations and they were definitely met. It's a good thing that we only have six months to wait for part two and I really hope we get part three.

28 Days Later (2002)

With 28 Years Later coming out, it seems like an opportune moment to see the previous two instalments. 28 Days Later is a film that reset the zombie horror genre even though they aren't zombies in this film but infected. The film starts with a trio of animal activists who release one of the chimps that are being infected with rage and things go quickly wrong. If only they hadn't done that then the next three films would never have happened. The film then moves along appropriately enough 28 days and we see a naked Cillian Murphy wake up. I’m not quite sure why he’s naked. I saw this after The Walking Dead and it's weird to see how similar they are. The film sees Jim walk around a deserted London which is strange to see and then comes across Naomie Harris’ Selena and Noah Huntley’s Mark and they go to Jim’s family home but then Mark gets killed then Jim and Selena carry on and come across Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns). Together they decide to go to Manchester and see help but when they get there then Frank is infected and killed and the soldiers do help but they become really sinister when Christopher Eccleston’s Major West says that he promised his soldiers a woman and that is when things go really wrong and then the infected take over the house.

This is one of those films that had a cast that were not particularly well known at the time but would go on to be big names. Cillian Murphy would go on to win an Oscar, Naomie Harris would go on to find fame and most recently played Miss Moneypenny in the Bond films, Brendan Gleeson is great in pretty much anything and was especially great in The Banshees of Inisherin. Christopher Eccelston is the one that stands out for me because he played the Doctor in Doctor Who back in 2005. Probably one of the most underrated actors to play the Doctor in the new era. He is horrible as Major Henry West. He is the leader of the army soldiers and is playing the nice guy hiding a sinister bully and he’s very good in the role although I do find the posh accent strange coming from Eccleston. Cillian Murphy is good as Jim. I think he does much better work in later years so I can't be too harsh about his acting because he does a good job, just not a great job. Naomie Harris is hard to like at first but once the story progresses she gets better and becomes a nice supporting performer next to Murphy. Brendan Gleeson like Eccleston does an accent that is slightly distracting (this time a cockney accent) but he is the father to Hannah and is the likeable supporting person that he would do in countless other films. I always dislike the fact that he dies because a drip of blood gets in his eye. I just wish he moved to one side as it fell but it's because I like Gleeson.

There is a TV show from the 70’s called Survivors about a pandemic wiping out the world (bit far fetched) but in that there is a scene where they go to a supermarket for supplies and there is someone hanging from the ceiling with a sign saying that looters would be killed and I felt that the scene when they go shopping needed a a darker moment although I understand why they did what they did. The film has plenty of dark moments in this film and the gore still seems effective even after all this time. The camera work is a bit ropey because it is hard to see what is going on especially during the final act when it's the middle of the night and there is very little light.

From a 2025 point of view, the worst thing about this film is the quality of the picture. I know that it was made in 2002 before HD was invented but would it have killed Columbia or Sony to spend a bit of money upgrading the image. There were a couple of shots that looked very grainy and some that looked a bit blurry. The worst part came in the early stages when things looked so dark I thought it was a joke. Also (and this is more of an observation), when this film came out in 2002 it was an 18 but now in 2025 it is a 15 certificate and it shows how far horror has come over the last 23 years. The important thing though is that this film still holds up and is in one of 100 favourite horror films. It would blow a lot of modern horror films, especially Blumhouse films out of the water.  It’s a horror film so it should be scary and there are still a lot of things that are scary and it ends with an upbeat ending which doesn't feel like it seems out of place. I missed this film when it came out in 2002 as it was years before my film appreciation improved to where it is today and I am so glad that I saw it on the big screen. I am very much looking forward to 28 Weeks Later. 

On a related note, there was a sneak peak scene of 28 Years Later and it does very much feel like its in keeping with 28 Days Later. It's a bit from the trailer where Aaron Taylor-Johnson and the kid come across the body hanging from the ceiling where ATJ is telling his son (????) to kill the body as a test. It was short but sweet.