Blood, Faith, and Fallout: '28 Years Later' Finds God at the End of the World

Boyle and Garland reunite for a zombie epic that trades brute horror for spiritual reckoning—and still leaves you breathless.

What’s it about? A group of survivors of the rage virus live on a small island. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors.

Who it’s for? Fans of 28 Days/Weeks Later, if you enjoy thought-provoking blockbusters, lovers of horror movies, admirers of both Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, if you like provocative filmmaking

Who should avoid? If you hate zombie movies, if you scare easily, if you’re looking for a straightforward action movie, if you dislike films led by child actors

Watch if you like: 28 Days Later, The Last of Us, The Wicker Man, Children of Men, The Road

News and Notes:

• Released Friday, June 20th

• First in a planned trilogy

Schmear’s Verdict: 28 Years Later is a bold, visually stunning, and spiritually rich epic that proves Danny Boyle and Alex Garland still have the power to thrill, provoke, and elevate the zombie genre.

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Horror films, especially zombie movies, are tremendous vehicles for social commentary. You can, ideally, thrill the viewer but make them think. The 28 franchise has excelled at exactly that. You may recall that the armed forces in 28 Days turn out to be authoritarian and misogynistic, but do you remember who let out the “rage virus”? Idealist left-wing anti-animal testing activists. Screenwriter Alex Garland’s “both-sidesing” didn’t start with Civil War—he’s been a natural-born skeptic since 2002.

28 Weeks Later, which I just watched for the first time, is arguably bleaker and more cynical than even its predecessor. Arriving in 2007 at the tail end of the Iraq War, the film features an interventionist U.S. Army establishing a “green zone” in quarantined London, unafraid to call a murderous “code red” when the infection, of course, re-spreads.

28 Years Later reunites the original director and writer duo of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland for a unique, mature, and no doubt very successful film on its own merits that has the odd job of launching a trilogy (we’ll get to that). The political undergirding is one of isolationism, a commentary on the debilitating effects of both COVID and Brexit, though the more poignant undercurrent is one of spirituality.

Danny Boyle directing Aaron Taylor-Johnson

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