Danny Boyle, Alex Garland, and producer Andrew Macdonald launched 28 Years Later, the latest addition to their seminal zombie franchise, last night in London.
In the pic, written by Garland, it’s been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory. And now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.
The film stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and Jack O’Connell. The buzz has been big on the threequel. Late last year, Sony reported that an early trailer for the flick, in its first week of release, became the most watched horror trailer in 2024 at 60.2M global views and the second biggest trailer of all-time behind It Chapter Two (96M views).
But what are the critics saying about the film?
Deadline’s Damon Wise said the film is “by far the most political of the three films” and offers a “particularly scathing” commentary about “Brexit Britain and its little-islander mentality.”
“Alex Garland’s script makes great play of how life in Britain has become stunted,” Wise wrote. “Flirting with folk horror, he makes the islanders little better than the infected, inviting comparisons with The Wicker Man as they carouse in the community center while a faded portrait of Her Majesty the Queen looks down.”
Aussie film magazine Filmink said 28 Years Later boasts “uniformly excellent” performances with “Taylor-Johnson and Comer both doing fine work, and Ralph Fiennes absolutely wonderful as poetic, death-obsessed Doctor Ian Kelson.”
“However, it’s young Alfie Williams who steals the show, giving us a likable and nuanced young tacker to root for and hope that he manages to survive,” the magazine concluded.
Empire Magazine described the film as a “pure horror experience” full of “ferocious, fizzing with adrenaline.”
“The film’s opening half, in particular, is phenomenal — an electrifying exercise in terror, amplified by Young Fathers’ astonishing score,” the magazine wrote.
In a review titled “28 Years Later Is Totally Nuts,” Vulture said the film “carries on the tradition of using genre as a Trojan horse to explore the sensation of life today.”
But the outlet notes that some “horror fiends will find themselves disappointed with a movie that’s too weird, too somber, too unresolved to deliver on the promised thrills.”
Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson wrote that he found himself “confused by the film’s unexpected tone, but also captivated by it.”
“Knowing that another film in the series has already been shot goes a long way toward softening the blunt impact of the film’s sudden, ambiguous ending,” Lawson wrote.
Time Magazine also zeroed in on the film’s ending.
“There’s much that’s terrifying and wonderful about 28 Years Later, but the ending is jarring and dumb, in a kick-ass heavy-metal way, and it breaks the mood,” Stephanie Zacharek wrote for the magazine.
“It’s as if Boyle had gotten cold feet about ending the movie on too solemn a note. But this ending, no matter how you feel about it, is really just a beginning. Boyle and Garland have two follow-up movies in the works. The next, already filmed, is directed by Nia DaCosta, of Candyman and The Marvels; Boyle will return for the third.”
Genre site Fangoria, however, said the threequel was “the best film in the franchise.”
“28 Years Later, by comparison, incorporates the world-building of its predecessor but retains the intimacy of the original film,” the magazine wrote. “Garland’s script rightfully observes that a few expository intertitles do more than enough to establish the world into which the audience and the film’s characters are plunged into, and then dials into the lives of a family that’s doing its best to navigate an unimaginable situation both environmentally and interpersonally.”
The film currently sits at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sony will release the film is in theaters on June 20.
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