22 years ago, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland helped start the zombie movie renaissance with a film that isn’t technically a zombie movie. “28 Days Later” is a pandemic film. And sadly, 22 years later, that subgenre has become woefully over-exploited.
On June 20, 2025, “28 Years Later” picks up (in our own timeline) 17 years after the rage virus bedlam of Juan Carlos Frizendillo’s 2007 sequel “28 Weeks Later.” Lest you think this is no small matter, know that 2024 Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy will be reprising his role as a comatose Jim for the film. The cast will include extremely talented people like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Jack O’Connell and Ralph Fiennes. As far as the state of the world in “28 Years Later” is concerned, the premise is that the anger virus is once again spreading and, presumably, the aforementioned actors are struggling to avoid joining the ranks of the infected. Will be.
It marks Boyle’s first feature film since 2019’s “Yesterday” and his first horror film since “28 Days Later.” It should be a pleasure to see the writer of “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog Millionaire” working in this genre again, and hopefully it will be a pleasure to see him work again with screenwriter Alex Garland, a legend in his own right. He has become a brilliant director. Right up there with explosive songs like “Annihilation” and “Civil War.”
So, what does the new trailer for “28 Years Later” promise in the way of rage-infused mayhem?
28 Days Later Looks Like The Road Meets I Am Legend
The first “28 Years Later” trailer appears to show a post-apocalyptic future, where things are basically like the later seasons of “The Walking Dead,” with luxuries like electricity and mundane things like everyday chores . However, this relatively stable life is that of people on an island, and it turns out that they are living in a bubble. Here’s the official synopsis for “28 Years Later.”
It’s been nearly three decades since an angry virus escaped from a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in brutally enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist among the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island that is connected to the mainland by a single, heavily guarded causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark center of the mainland, he discovers secrets, miracles, and horrors that have transformed not only the infected but the other survivors as well.
There are strong hints of cannibalism, towers of skulls, and hungry angry virus victims – all of which promise to be the darkest chapter of the story yet. But perhaps more disturbing than any scene is the score: Taylor Holmes’s reading of “Boots,” a 1915 war poem by Rudyard Kipling. This particular recording is used in the US Navy’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) schools to test the mental resiliency of soldiers during POW training, by placing them in a small cell and playing the recording repeatedly . You can easily imagine how this can drive a person crazy.
“28 Years Later” will hit theaters on June 20, 2025.
