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28 Years Later is officially out in cinemas and well, it was more than worth the wait. Swapping the original's gritty realism for something more mythical and emotional, Danny Boyle's zombie horror sequel shakes the genre up in exciting ways yet again – all while kicking off what promises to be an epic, unpredictable trilogy.
With Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes taking over from leads of the original – largely considered one of the best horror movies of all time – Brendan Gleeson, Christopher Eccleston, Naomie Harris, and Cillian Murphy, it follows naive Holy Island local 12-year-old Spike as he ventures onto the infected-riddled mainland to try and save his ailing mother.
Article continues below28 Years Later reviews
In our 28 Years Later review, we gave it a respectable 3-star rating. "Though stronger in its more straightforward first half than in its experimental and hallucinatory second, 28 Years… still provides enough terror, splatter and suspense to satisfy," we wrote.
At the time of writing, critics seemed to rate it a little more highly on the whole, with 28 Years Later currently holding an impressive 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. No mean feat, either, considering the beloved original is rated 87%.
"This is the best of the 28 movies," FirstShowing's Alex Billington boldly claims. "Yes it's even better than 28 Days Later, and a much better sequel than 28 Weeks Later. What I was not ready for is how Boyle once again reinvents the zombie genre by trying out new ideas."
Though that's not to say that everyone was keen. Splice Today's Stephen Silver argues that Boyle "is an inconsistent filmmaker" and that Alfie Williams "isn't up" for leading the ensemble, while Loud and Clear Reviews writes: "For all the possible directions this narrative could have taken, you can’t help but wonder why this is the one the filmmakers landed on."
Only time will tell if the flick manages to maintain its high score once more reviews filter in. So, stay tuned as we keep you updated on all the genre discourse!
28 Years Later release date
28 Years Later arrived in UK cinemas on June 20, before landing in the US a day later.
It was shot back-to-back with its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – directed by Candyman's Nia DaCosta – which is slated for a January 16, 2026 release. Both movies were filmed using a 20-iPhone rig to capture the film's "graphic" violence.
There's a third film in the pipeline after that, too, with Boyle stepping back in to cap off the trilogy. It's subtitle has yet to be revealed, which is hardly surprising, really, given that Boyle previously explained to Empire magazine that Sony Pictures wants to see how well the first film does before it officially greenlights production.
"This is very narratively ambitious. Danny and I understood that," added writer Alex Garland, who penned the very first film. "We tried to condense it, but its natural form felt like a trilogy."
"You just don't get to do a story on this scale in this country," producer Andrew Macdonald told the same publication. "To do something in Britain that feels like it has [size], it's great."
At CinemaCon, Boyle admitted that he was struggling to find financing for chapter three, as he urged genre fans to go out and support 28 Years Later and its sequel in cinemas.
28 Years Later trailer
If you've not had a chance to get to the cinema yet, 28 Years Later's trailer should keep you satiated for the time being.
We got our first look at 28 Years Later back in December 2024 – but despite its two-minute (and seven seconds) runtime, it's a pretty cryptic promo. It opens with a bunch of children watching Teletubbies in a dated-looking terraced house, as the clip explains, "It began 10,228 days ago. Days became weeks."
The footage, which you can see above, then shows us a wide shot of an isolated island, before we see a creepy scarecrow with an arrow through its "head", a bunch of memorial crosses, and a young man steering a horse and a cart. "Weeks became years," the text continues ominously, as it cuts to illustrated posters of "roles in our community" such as seamster, lookout, and councillor.
We get shots of the island's watch tower and armory as two characters pass through its heavily guarded gates and start walking the causeway between the island and mainland England. It all gets a bit a later-season Walking Dead after that, as it follows the characters – armed with bows and arrows – through fields, abandoned farmyards, and sewer systems crawling with the dead.
"Next summer, what will humanity become... 28 Years Later?" it asks right at the end.
A second promo was shown behind closed doors at CinemaCon 2025, though it has since made its way online. Check it out above. It opens "on three guys in military gear in a dark room, with one zombie popping out at them.
"Next we see an island, with a voiceover saying, 'many people dead… infected and non-infected alike.' 'Once you walk onto that mainland, there's no rescue.' We see Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a boy running away from about a dozen infected. Then the military guys again, but this time during the day, also running away from the infected. We see several dozen scenes of people fighting and running from infected. Lots of it seems to take place around the island and near water. Throughout the trailer, splash pages read: 'How Much Time…Do We…Have Left?'"
28 Years Later cast
Like its predecessors, 28 Years Later boasts a small but mighty cast, with Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes all having lead roles. Comer plays a woman named Isla, with Johnson portraying her husband, Jamie. Alfie Williams brings their son, Spike, to life. (Oh, and art dealer-turned-actor Angus Neill plays an 'Emaciated Man' succumbed to the Rage Virus)
Check out the full cast list below...
- Alfie Williams as Spike
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Jamie
- Jodie Comer as Isla
- Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Ian Kelson
- Edvin Ryding as Erik Sundqvist
- Jack O'Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal
- Rocco Hannes as Young Jimmy
- Sandy Batchelor as Jimmy's father/the Priest
- Robert Rhodes as Jimmy Jimmy
- Erin Kellyman as Jimmy Ink
- Sam Locke as Jimmy Fox
- Ghazi Al Ruffai as Jimmy Snake
- Connor Newall as Jimmy Shita
- Emma Laird as Jimmima
- Maura Bird as Jimmy Jones
- Christopher Fulford as Sam
- Amy Cameron as Rosey
- Stella Gonet as Jenny
- Chi Lewis-Parry as Samson/the Alpha
While he doesn't appear in 28 Years Later, Cillian Murphy is expected to have an on-screen part in its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. "He is in the second one," Danny Boyle confirmed in June 2025, although he couldn't share any more details: "I shouldn't give away too much. I'll get killed."
28 Years Later plot
"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," reads 28 Years Later's official synopsis.
At the end of 28 Weeks Later, it was teased that the Rage Virus had spread to Europe, with a French person calling for help through the radio in Flynn's abandoned helicopter and shots of zombies emerging from the Metro in Paris. Interestingly, though, the new movie backtracks on all of that, explaining in a written statement before it begins that the rest of the world managed to contain the virus to the UK, and that the British Isles are quarantined and frequently patrolled via the seas by other countries.
"It's a closed and necessarily very tight community," Boyle told Empire magazine. "There are very strict defense laws, obviously, to survive that long in what is effectively an ongoing hostile environment. They've created a successful community, as they see it."
28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later recap
Released in 2002, 28 Days Later was inspired by The Night of the Living Dead and The Day of the Triffids. It opens with a group of animal rights activists breaking into a research facility in Cambridge, with the hopes of releasing its unfortunate test suspects, a bunch of chimpanzees. Despite one scientist's desperate pleas for them not to open the cages, they do, and realize too late that the chimpanzees have been exposed to a substance that makes them highly aggressive – and the virus that's made them murderous is highly contagious. One activist is attacked by a chimpanzee and changes immediately, lashing out at her former pals as the scientist insists they kill her to prevent an epidemic. They don't listen and the infected activist savages the others as the chimps look on.
Four weeks later, Cillian Murphy's courier Jim wakes up from a coma, having been knocked off his bike prior to the outbreak. He quickly realizes that the hospital he's in is deserted and wanders out into central London, finding it ransacked and similarly void of people. He passes a church full of the dead then runs into a horde of infected, before being rescued by fellow survivors Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley).
At Jim's request, the trio travel to Deptford to check in on his family, but on their arrival, they learn that Jim's mother and father have died by suicide, having left him a note that wishes he never wakes to experience the horror of the new world. At the house, Mark is bitten, but Selena hacks him to death before he can turn.
They head back into London after spotting a makeshift signal on a high-rise in Poplar and meet cab driver Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). They hole up there for a while before setting off to Manchester, after Frank catches wind of a sanctuary up north. Their travels are intercepted by a bunch of soldiers, though, who execute a newly-infected Frank and kidnap the others, taking them to their fortified mansion in the country. Before long, Jim discovers that the soldiers have been luring female survivors into sexual slavery, having tricked them with the promise of food and protection.
Jim is horrified and teams up with repentant Sergeant Farrell (Stuart McQuarrie) to kill the soldiers' twisted leader Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston), which they pull off by releasing the infected private he's been keeping chained up in the courtyard – though Farrell is killed in the chaos.
Convinced it's only Britain that's been overrun by zombies, Jim, Selena, and Hannah escape to a remote farm in Cumbria, and before long, they notice that the infected nearby have started dying from starvation. The film ends with the trio trying to get the attention of a Hawker Hunter plane flying overhead, with a huge cloth banner that spells out "hello" on the hills. While they can't be certain on the ground, the film makes clear that the pilot spots them, which explains how Jim is set to appear in The Bone Temple.
Released in 2007, 28 Weeks Later picks up seven months later, though it kicks off with a flashback to the outbreak. In the cold open, Robert Carlyle's Don selfishly abandons his wife when a bunch of infected descend upon their cottage on the outskirts of London.
In the present day, the US military is seen taking control of Britain under Brigadier General Stone (Idris Elba). Among the refugees and settlers they're handling are Don and Alice's children, Tammy and Andy, who have been out of the country. The siblings are taken to District One, a well-protected safe zone on the Isle of Dogs, where they reunite with their father, who lies about their mother's presumed death.
One night, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) sneak out of the safe zone and travel to their family home, with the mission to collect old photographs as memories of the before times, but are followed by Sergeant Doyle (Jeremy Renner). There, they find Alice (Catherine McCormack) in a delirious, semi-conscious state, before being carted back to District One. Alice is placed in quarantine and undergoes tests carried out by medical officer and asymptomatic carrier Scarlet (Rose Byrne).
Don disobeys orders and enters Alice's room, where she lashes out at him for leaving her behind and kisses him. Don immediately succumbs to the Rage Virus and kills Alice, before more and more refugees and soldiers start getting infected. Scarlet and Doyle whisk Tammy and Andy away from the rapidly escalating chaos, suspecting that their DNA might hold the key to a cure, as the Air Force firebombs the camp. Don escapes into a desolate London, while the survivors head to Wembley Stadium – though they lose Doyle, who's attacked by American soldiers with flamethrowers, on the way. The others pivot to the London Underground, but run into Don, who kills Scarlet and bites Andy. Tammy kills Don, as it's revealed Andy is immune in the same way his mother was.
Tammy and Andy make it to the stadium, where a helicopter pilot named Flynn (Harold Perrineau) reluctantly agrees to fly them to France.
For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.
