As the credits finally rolled on 28 Years Later, I sat in stunned silence, not from awe, but from sheer disbelief at what I’d just endured. This wasn’t a sequel—it was a cinematic identity crisis, a Frankenstein’s monster of half-baked ideas stitched together with the narrative coherence of a TikTok slideshow. I’ve seen bad movies. I’ve seen confusing movies. But rarely have I seen a film so convinced of its own profundity while delivering less substance than a zombie’s last brain cell.
What the Hell Was This, Exactly?
Let’s start with the most glaring offense: the visuals. Shot like a student film that accidentally left its Instagram filters on “dystopian landfill,” the movie’s aesthetic wavered between “early-2000s camcorder” and “AI-generated art prompt gone wrong.” The shaky, gratuitous panning shots and seizure-inducing jump cuts didn’t create tension—they created migraines. At one point, I genuinely wondered if the projectionist had spiked their coffee with LSD.
Then there’s the story—or lack thereof. 28 Days Later worked because it was lean, mean, and emotionally raw. This? A bloated, meandering mess that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be:
- A coming-of-age drama (but with zombies?)
- A philosophical treatise on human nature (delivered via monologues that sounded like a freshman’s late-night dorm rant)
- A half-hearted attempt at 28 Days’ visceral terror (except the zombies now seem like an afterthought)
The result? A film that lurches between tones like a drunk stumbling between pub crawls, leaving the audience exhausted, not exhilarated.
The Cast: Wasted Potential on a Post-Apocalyptic Scale
Aaron Taylor-Johnson continues his streak of playing insufferable himbos, this time as… some kind of smarmy jockey-survivor hybrid? I’ve yet to see him in a role that doesn’t make me wish for a swift zombie intervention. The real tragedy, though, is Jodie Comer, who does her absolute best as Isla, selling hysteria and heartbreak with every glance—only to be given the bare minimum to work with beyond screaming and staring wistfully at the middle distance.
The lone bright spot? Alfie Williams as Spike, the kid who somehow emerged as the most grounded character in this circus. Too bad his arc was drowned out by the film’s relentless insistence on being “deep.”
And then there’s Ralph Fiennes, popping in like a confused Shakespearean actor who wandered onto the wrong set. His subplot catches us by surprise—the only coherent narrative in the entire film. Channeling his dark-sided Orange Lorax cosplay, he ceremoniously speaks for the bones and delves into a cryptic explanation of “Memento Mori,” leaving Spike bewildered but comforted by the one thematic aspect that came across naturally: we’re all dead in the end, thus our mortality.
The Zombies sorry Infected? Oh Right, Those.
Remember when 28 Days Later made infected sprint at you like nightmares given flesh? You had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide – the audience saw that and the characters knew that. Here, they’re almost relegated to background noise, a vague threat that occasionally stumbles into frame when the script remembers it’s supposed to be a zombie movie. The “Alpha” – (a strangely forced concept into a continuously dying genre)- zombie’s death isn’t just anticlimactic—it’s a metaphor for the entire film: built up as something terrifying, only to be unceremoniously skewered, stunned and forgotten.
The Final Insult: That Ending
Just when you think it’s over—surprise! A “28 DAYS later” title card drops like a jump scare nobody asked for, leading to a finale so bafflingly tone-deaf it felt like the director lost a bet. The last 10 minutes devolve into an action montage of bizarre British parkour that felt like a rejected Monty Python sketch meets American Psycho
The Verdict: 28 Years Too Soon
This wasn’t a sequel. It was a suggestion of a movie—a rough draft sprayed onto the screen with the subtlety of a fire hose. Danny Boyle’s original was lightning in a bottle; this is the bottle shattered, the lightning long gone, and the audience left picking glass out of their palms.
A cinematic fever dream that mistakes confusion for depth. The only thing contagious here is regret.
