28 Years Later (2025) Review

This film was shot back-to-back with its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

Kids are sat around watching a VHS of Teletubbies on a CRT. Then zombies break in. One kid escapes. Tries to get into a church, which is open, but he's unsure how doors work so it takes him a while. His father's a priest who is deeply invested in the zombie apocalypse as a theological event. He gives him a cross, tells him to have faith, and then gets a bit orgasmic about being eaten. I actually think that's what a lot of true believers might do in response to a zombie apocalypse. The ones with faith, not the ones with private jets. They're hiding on a "friend's" island when this sort of thing goes down, presumably.

We're told the virus never makes it to the mainland, stays in the UK. I find it very hard to believe the rest of the world simply blockades a country with a civilisation-destroying virus on it and then just... carries on. These zombies can't swim and apparently need to breathe, which at least gives us a tidy explanation for why island life is viable. We see a small, traditional commune: herding sheep, fishing, making arrows. All very little England. Somewhere Nigel Farage's voters, red-faced and sweaty and cheering. They'd probably be fine with a deadly virus that killed most people if it kept us out of Europe. Brexit means Zombie-Brexit.

His mother has something wrong with her; she can't remember mornings or zombies exist. She screams at the father, calling him a crazy sick baby murderer because the boy's going to the mainland.

He's going out at 12. Typically they start at 15. It's never made clear why his father wants to take him out so young. He's not exactly well-developed; the kid still looks like a pre-teen.

They've got a causeway only available at low tide and a current keeping swimmers away. It's a smart setup, but the narration is clumsy: the father tells the boy to explain it back to him. It's too obviously for our benefit to feel like a natural conversation.

Whilst this is going on, there's a weird overlay of military-style narration and snippets of British history. It might work on a cinema screen, but on TV it's just jarring.

They're out using bows and arrows, which makes a huge amount of sense: powerful, practical, and silent. They're probably supposed to be English Longbows, but they're not really big enough; the Longbow was almost two metres long. The kid has to kill his first zombie.

They find an infected man tied up, someone who'd been regular and punished. The father basically makes the kid kill him when he escapes. It's a suspicious setup, and you immediately assume the father has arranged this to "make a man" of his 12-year-old son. It's a bit of a cliché that the seemingly wholesome community has a dark secret, but it tracks here.

They get stuck out and have to sleep in a ruined barn. There's an Alpha Zombie: smarter and faster than the others. The barn collapses and they get chased. "It's still high tide," says Spike. "Only just -- we'll be able to make it," says Jamie. That's not how tides work. It doesn't jump from high to low; there's a whole stretch in the middle where the causeway is still impassable.

The town has a good gate, but what it really needs is an airlock approach: let people in, contain them, then decide. As it stands, it's either let them in or leave them outside.

Jamie does a whole speech about how brave Spike is. Spike is embarrassed by the lies.

Jamie is sleeping with the school teacher. Spike's angry he isn't faithful to the woman who screams obscenities at him. A villager tells Spike about a doctor on the mainland, whose fire Spike spotted. When he confronts his father, Jamie says maybe he was a doctor once, but he's lost his goddamn mind. (Remember this warning.)

The 12-year-old who has had exactly one trip outside tries to guilt-trip his father: "Do you want Mum to die?" This boy is a very sensitive, weepy child for someone raised in a tiny community built on death and zombie-killing. His dad's angry and unstable, but, you know, end of the world.

Spike sets a building on fire in the village to keep the watchers busy, then takes his mentally ill mother to visit the possibly-a-doctor man on the mainland. I am very much not on the kid's side here. Growing up as he has, he should have a far sharper sense of how precarious their existence is and how irreplaceable their resources are. He wants to save his mother; that's understandable. But he's doing it at the expense of his entire community.

The mother kills a zombie while the kid sleeps.

They're saved by a stray member of the EU force that blockades the UK -- his ship sank, crashed, or left without him. The Swedish soldier's English is fantastic, though his Swedish accent is not, nor is his insistence on being a Viking. Ten years in Scandinavia, and not once have I heard anyone claim it. That's chronically online Americans. It's also hard to understand why English would still be a dominant language after 30 years of UK isolation. Just a thought.

For a zombie film, this is very slow-paced and non-scary.

There's a pregnant infected. It's a horrifying thing to consider: she was either bitten recently, someone is sleeping with an infected, or two infected are having sex with each other. None of these are good.

The infected doesn't attack them during labour. The baby is human. What a miracle. The soldier kills the infected when it leaps at them, then wants to kill the baby. He's then killed by an Alpha despite being the only genuinely sensible person in the group. You have no idea what that baby is. You've already got one extremely vulnerable liability in the group. Adding a second, who may be a zombie or a carrier, is not heroism; it's sentimentality at other people's expense.

The arrows don't do much against the Alpha.

The doctor arrives and saves them with a medicated blowdart. He's covered in iodine and wearing a yellow tank top. He tranquillises the Alpha with a blowgun and takes the Swede's head with him as a keepsake, because of course he does.

Isla is giving the newborn water from a random stream. You're probably not supposed to do that. More evidence the baby is more than it seems.

The doctor has built what he calls "the Bone Temple": tall towers made from the skulls and bones of the dead. It's a horrifyingly unhinged hobby. Remember what Jamie said? "Maybe he was a doctor, but he's lost his goddamn mind." The reason there's a visible fire you can see from a distance is that the doctor incinerates any bodies he finds so he can play with their lovely bones. He's built an entire machine to assist with this. There's enough Nazi death camp energy in this man's hobby to make you deeply uncomfortable. Spike and Isla seem entirely unbothered. Also: why hasn't he been eaten? There doesn't seem to be much protecting him. The answer is an underground cage he retreats to. Which Samson the Alpha Zombie knows about, so he's also essentially trapped. It's not a good system, but he's a deranged man making art out of human remains, so perhaps we shouldn't expect strategic brilliance.

Isla is terminally ill, with extensive and visible cancerous tumours. She knew it was probably cancer. She hoped someone else would tell Spike, but no one did. Meaning this entire trip was a dangerous waste of time, directly responsible for the Swedish soldier's death, and entirely avoidable. All because no one talked to Spike, and no one raised Spike well enough to not commit arson when he wants something he shouldn't have.

Spike places his mother's skull on top of the pyramid of skulls. It's meant to be touching. He kisses the skull. It is not touching; it is deeply disturbing. This child is a sociopath.

He takes the baby back to the island community and leaves it with them.

He doesn't stay, saying he'll come back when he's ready and spouting some nonsense about how Dr Kelsey isn't really insane. However, this is also the boy who kissed his mother's skull and helped sear the flesh from her bones to build a macabre art installation, so perhaps his assessment of other people's mental health shouldn't be treated as authoritative.

Spike meets a gang of men dressed like Jimmy Savile. They do parkour.

Running tally of what the zombie apocalypse has apparently produced: religious extremism, flag-shagging little Englanders, an anti-abortion metaphor, Nazi death camp aesthetics, and a gang modelled on a paedophile. Not the best of the best. Natural selection, one assumes, is still a work in progress.

The film has real problems with pacing and not a single likeable character. It's hard to root for people you don't care about doing stupid things for bad reasons. You can forgive characters you love making questionable calls, see Walter White, but you can't manufacture investment from nothing. The original community is probably better off without their junior arsonist, though I wouldn't wish a life surrounded by Jimmy Savile cosplayers on anyone.