--- title: "28 Years Later" year: 2025 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/28-years-later" fi1m_id: "28-years-later" imdb_id: "tt10548174" tmdb_id: 1100988 wikidata_id: "Q125392328" fi1m_score: 76 critics_score: 78 critics_reviews: 14 published: "2026-09-09" updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:50.587178+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # 28 Years Later (2025) Directed by Danny Boyle · 1h 55m · MPA R · Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction ## Identity 28 Years Later - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/28-years-later - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** 28-years-later - **IMDb ID:** tt10548174 - **TMDB ID:** 1100988 - **Wikidata ID:** Q125392328 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10548174/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1100988, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q125392328 **Fi1m score: 76** · Critics 78 from 14 reviews *In a sentence:* Twenty-eight years on and the English have turned the end of the world into a parish > Danny Boyle and Alex Garland go back to the Britain they emptied in *28 Days Later* and find it stranger and sadder than they left it. For an hour and three quarters this is a frightening, thoughtful horror film. Then come the last five minutes. ## Synopsis Twenty-eight years after the Rage virus emptied Britain, the mainland is quarantined and the rest of the world has moved on. On Holy Island, a small community lives behind a gate at the end of a causeway the tide covers twice a day. Spike (Alfie Williams) is taken across to the mainland by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) for his first kill. His mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is ill in a way nobody on the island can name. When Spike hears that a doctor (Ralph Fiennes) is still alive out there, he decides to take her to him. Danny Boyle directs from a script by Alex Garland; the infected have changed in the years since anyone last looked. ## Review Danny Boyle and Alex Garland made [*28 Days Later*](https://film.one/film/28-days-later) in 2002 and made the infected run. Twenty-three years on they are back, Garland writing and Boyle directing, and the country they left has grown strange. The mainland is quarantined and the rest of the world patrols the coast to keep it so. On Holy Island, reached by a causeway the tide covers twice a day, a community lives as if it were 1400, with bows and arrows and a gate they bar at night. This is a good film, Boyle’s most alive in years, and it has a final five minutes we would pay to have removed. Spike (Alfie Williams) is a boy being taken across for his first kill by his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who enjoys the mainland more than a father should. Anthony Dod Mantle shot much of it on iPhones, rigged in banks so the picture can go wide and crisp and slightly wrong, and when the infected attack the frame shatters into a dozen angles of the same second. Over Spike’s first walk into the trees Boyle lays a scratched 1915 recording of Kipling’s *Boots*, a man barking the same word until it stops being one, and cuts in archive footage of English longbowmen. We were frightened, properly, on the way back across the causeway with the tide rising and something in the water behind them. It was the sound that did it: bare feet on wet sand, closer each time. The infected have changed. Some crawl now, fat and slow, grazing on worms; others have grown into what the islanders call alphas, and the largest, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), tears heads off with the spine still attached. Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl, credited for both costume and production design, dress the island in wool, leather and salvaged plastic and let the mainland rot without art-directing it: trees through the roofs of cars, a house gone to moss. The islanders have made the end of the world cosy, and the film knows this is funny. The second half belongs to Isla and to Ralph Fiennes. Isla (Jodie Comer) is ill in a way nobody on the island can name; she forgets where she is, then comes back and knows she has been gone. Comer never asks for sympathy and so earns it. Spike, having heard that a doctor still lives out there, takes her across himself, and on the way they collect a stranded Swedish soldier, Erik (Edvin Ryding), who gives the film its outside view and most of its laughs. Then they reach Dr Kelson. Fiennes, shaven-headed and painted from crown to ankle in iodine, has spent the years building something out of the dead, and we will leave it there. He talks to the boy about dying as though it were a subject like any other, and it moved us more than we expected of a film with a spine-ripping in it. The reason is stillness. After an hour of Jon Harris cutting like a man in a hurry, the camera simply sits, and the music, by Young Fathers (credited as Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and ‘G’ Hastings), drops from percussion to voices. The satire is thinner than the film thinks. Garland wants the island to stand for a certain Britain, walled in and pleased about it, and the point is made in the first twenty minutes and then made again on every return home. The alphas are frightening; the crawling infected are a curiosity the film raises and drops. And the last five minutes take a turn we will not describe. They belong to a different, sillier film, they exist to set up the next instalment, and they arrive seconds after the story has finished properly and well. We were angry, sitting there, after being so well looked after for an hour and three quarters. Several critics have flinched at the same spot. Against Boyle’s own work this is the most patient film he has made in a long time, and against the 2002 film it is stranger, slower and less frightening. At 115 minutes it does not dawdle. See it in a cinema if you can, with the sound up, because the infected frighten in proportion to how loud they are. And when Spike’s story ends, and you will know when it does, take it that the film has ended too. What follows is an advertisement for the sequel. *Fi1m score 76, published 9 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics welcome Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s return to the series, and several call it Boyle’s strongest film in years. The praise clusters around the performances, with Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer named most often and newcomer Alfie Williams singled out more than once, and around the film’s picture of a Britain cut off from the world and turning in on itself, which many reviews read as a comment on Brexit and isolationism. The folk-horror imagery and the medieval feel of the future Britain draw approval, as does the Young Fathers soundtrack. The reservations gather almost entirely at the end: The i Paper, Time Out, The Ringer and Collider all fault a coda they find goofy or jarring against the downbeat tone. The Guardian finds the film tonally uncertain, and Radio Times notes pacing problems and too many fast cuts. The spread runs from three-star notices to full marks, with no outright negative review. ## Straight answers **Is 28 Years Later worth watching?** *28 Years Later* is worth watching for anyone who likes their horror frightening and thoughtful, and we scored it 76. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have made a strange, patient, well-acted film with a fine second half for Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes. The last five minutes set up a sequel and nearly spoil what came before; treat them as a trailer. **How long is 28 Years Later, and what is it rated?** *28 Years Later* runs 1h 55m and is rated R by the MPA in the US. It is a horror and thriller film. **Where can I watch 28 Years Later in the US?** *28 Years Later* is streaming on Netflix in the US, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from $5.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How violent or frightening is 28 Years Later, and is it suitable for children?** *28 Years Later* is a 15 in the UK and an R in the US, and it is not for children. The infected tear heads off with the spine attached, and the film frightens hardest through sound rather than gore, with bare feet on wet sand closing in behind you. Teenagers who can take that will manage; the squeamish will not enjoy it. **How does 28 Years Later compare to 28 Weeks Later?** *28 Years Later* is the stranger and more patient of the two, while [*28 Weeks Later*](https://film.one/film/28-weeks-later) is the more direct scare. Fresnadillo's film opens with the best ten minutes in the series and then chases them, with a plot that asks you to look away twice. Boyle's is slower, sadder and better acted, and lets itself down only at the very end. **Do you need to have seen the other 28 Days Later films before 28 Years Later?** *28 Years Later* can be watched without having seen the earlier films. It sets up its own world in the first few minutes, a quarantined Britain and a small island community, and the boy at its centre is new. Knowing [*28 Days Later*](https://film.one/film/28-days-later) adds a little to the sense of how the infected have changed, but it is not required. **What should I watch after 28 Years Later?** After *28 Years Later*, try [*28 Days Later*](https://film.one/film/28-days-later) (2002, Fi1m 77): Where it began: the empty London, the running dead, and Boyle at full sprint. Then [*Children of Men*](https://film.one/film/children-of-men) (2006, Fi1m 85): Another Britain gone to seed, shot by Cuarón as if the rot were weather; and [*Threads*](https://film.one/film/threads) (1984, Fi1m 92): The BBC’s nuclear film; still the most frightening thing British television has made. **What order should I watch the 28 Days Later films in?** Release order is the safe choice for 28 Days Later, and it is the order [our collection page](https://film.one/collections/28-days-later) lists them in. *28 Years Later* is number 3 of the 4 28 Days Later titles on Fi1m; before it comes [*28 Weeks Later*](https://film.one/film/28-weeks-later) and after it [*28 Years Later: The Bone Temple*](https://film.one/film/28-years-later-the-bone-temple). [The full order.](https://film.one/collections/28-days-later.md) ### Reviews we read (18) - **The Times** (★★★★★): The third and possibly best instalment in the 28 Days Later franchise reunites Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. It combines wonder and outlandishness with the regulation flesh-rending and vicious disembowelment. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/28-years-later-review-the-best-in-danny-boyles-zombie-franchise-zwb08696h) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (85/100, inferred): Boyle and Garland demonstrate fresh inspiration for pulse-pounding terror in this first part of a planned trilogy that reinvigorates the franchise with relevant allegorical commentary. The film is praised as a bloody feast for horror connoisseurs, with strong performances especially from newcomer Alfie Williams and Jodie Comer singled out as the standout. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/28-years-later-review-jodie-comer-aaron-taylor-johnson-1236294541/) - **The Telegraph** (85/100, inferred): This transfixingly nasty zombie horror sequel is Danny Boyle’s best film in 17 years. It offers a phantasmagorical vision of a deeply familiar, vulnerable, beautiful nation that has become intent on simultaneously turning in on and against itself. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/28-years-later-review-sequel-jodie-comer-ralph-fiennes/) - **Variety**, Peter Debruge (Critics Pick): The critic lauds the film as a radical evolution of the horror saga that confronts primal fears of death and the other through innovative style and a new set of characters on Holy Island. It offers enlightenment alongside thrills, restoring humanity to the infected while delivering spectacle. [Read](https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/28-years-later-review-1236435361/) - **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh (75/100, inferred): The English are in bad shape in this expansive sequel. The movie can feel like a hall-of-mirrors state-of-the-nation address, with the world finding a remedy for the infected UK by simply cutting it off as a pariah plague island. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/c8065e5d-3de0-4014-869e-c2cf3ec9a92c) - **The New York Times**, Manohla Dargis (75/100, inferred): The critic describes Boyle's return to the post-apocalyptic Britain of the original as a plausible and familiar freakout centered on a father-son coming-of-age tale amid infected threats. The film balances hope and resignation while updating classic zombie tropes with fast-moving creatures. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/movies/28-years-later-review-danny-boyle.html) - **The Guardian** (70/100, inferred): The tonally uncertain revival mixes folk horror and little-England satire as an island lad seeks help for his sick mum on the undead-infested mainland. It takes a generational leap into the future from the initial catastrophe, creating something intriguing but going in circles with its dual-speed zombies. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jun/18/28-years-later-review-danny-boyle-zombies-alex-garland-jodie-comer-aaron-taylor-johnson) - **The i Paper**, Christina Newland (65/100, inferred): The critic finds the film largely excellent as a survival horror with grit, suspense and strong world-building, but faults the final moments for introducing goofy elements that clash with the downbeat tone and set up the trilogy awkwardly. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/28-years-later-review-falls-final-hurdle-3759054) - **Radio Times**, Terry Staunton (3/5): It offers a more reflective, human story than previous entries, putting the franchise back on track with strong performances from the young lead and supporting cast, though the script has some pacing issues and an over-reliance on fast cuts. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/28-years-later-review/) - **Time Out**, Phil de Semlyen (3/5): The first half is thrilling with punky editing and pop-art style, reinventing the zombie movie as a bloody installation, but the second half is less certain with acting excellence undermined by a dud ending. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/28-years-later-review-2025) - **Screen Daily**: Boyle's return brings a satisfying mix of old horrors and new ideas, building a post-apocalyptic vision with a strong cast and immersive world-building, though it lacks the immediate visceral bite of the original. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/28-years-later-review-director-danny-boyle-returns-to-lead-horror-franchise-into-new-territory/5206153.article) - **Sight and Sound**: The critic praises Boyle and Garland for taking the saga in an inspired mythical turn, highlighting the rich, strange vision of a future Britain in a Dark Age with resonant imagery from history and other films, and strong performances especially from Comer and Fiennes. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/28-years-later-danny-boyle-imagines-dark-british-future-thrilling-expansion-his-zombie-classic) - **Collider**, Emma Kiely (9/10): The critic finds it an exciting and terrifying horror movie with a nuanced philosophical tale about mortality, morality, and acceptance of death, praising Boyle and Garland's direction and the performances, especially Ralph Fiennes. Notes a tonal shift at the end that felt jarring but overall hails it as one of the best zombie horror movies in years and Boyle's best since Trainspotting. [Read](https://collider.com/28-years-later-review-danny-boyle/) - **The Ringer**, Adam Nayman (85/100, inferred): Boyle's best movie in a long time, a lucid and non-superfluous legacy sequel with sophisticated visuals, emotional depth on mortality, and a strong Garland script that balances genre thrills with metaphysical elements. Praises the actors and risks taken, though notes the goofy coda. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2025/06/20/movies/28-years-later-movie-review-sequel) - **The Wrap** (85/100, inferred): The critic notes the film's evolution into a mature coming-of-age tale with stylistic flair and folk-horror elements, emphasizing its focus on human themes over pure horror while praising the lush, pensive approach. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/28-years-later-review-danny-boyle/) - **Deadline**, Damon Wise (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's emotional depth in exploring mortality and family bonds, especially through Ralph Fiennes' standout performance, while noting its scathing political commentary on Brexit Britain and a jaw-dropping finale. [Read](https://deadline.com/2025/06/28-years-later-review-danny-boyle-jodie-comer-zombie-horror-1236436839/) - **Den of Geek**, David Crow (4 out of 5): The critic praises the film as a baroque and haunting spectacle that pulses with life, especially its memento mori elements and medieval aesthetic. They single out the performances of Jodie Comer and the film's meditation on family, community, and regression to the past. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/28-years-later-review-danny-boyl-alex-garland/) - **NME**, Jordan Bassett (5): The review calls it brilliantly bizarre, extravagantly bold, imaginative, turning the franchise on its head with a post-Brexit take on isolationism, funny, horrifying, and profound. Singles out the soundtrack by Young Fathers and Ralph Fiennes' role. [Read](https://www.nme.com/reviews/film-reviews/28-years-later-review-horror-3871043) ## Details - **Director:** Danny Boyle - **Director:** Danny Boyle - **Writer:** Alex Garland - **Cinematography:** Anthony Dod Mantle - **Editor:** Jon Harris - **Music:** Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole, 'G' Hastings - **Production design:** Gareth Pugh, Carson McColl - **Costume design:** Gareth Pugh, Carson McColl - **Producer:** Alex Garland, Danny Boyle, Peter Rice - **Cast:** Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Jamie; Alfie Williams as Spike; Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Kelson; Jodie Comer as Isla; Jack O'Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal; Chi Lewis-Parry as Samson; Edvin Ryding as Erik Sundqvist; Christopher Fulford as Sam - **Runtime:** 1h 55m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 20 June 2025 - **Genres:** Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction - **Part of:** [28 Days Later](https://film.one/collections/28-days-later.md) · 3 of 4 - **Budget:** $60 million - **Box office:** $151 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYGG55qwQZQ ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: rent $5.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-10.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *28 Days Later* (2002), Fi1m 77: Where it began: the empty London, the running dead, and Boyle at full sprint. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/28-days-later.md) - *Children of Men* (2006), Fi1m 85: Another Britain gone to seed, shot by Cuarón as if the rot were weather. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/children-of-men.md) - *Threads* (1984), Fi1m 92: The BBC’s nuclear film; still the most frightening thing British television has made. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/threads.md) - *Train to Busan* (2016), Fi1m 84: Korea does the fast infected on a train, with a father and child to protect. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/train-to-busan.md) - *The Wicker Man* (1973), Fi1m 90: An island with its own rules about outsiders, and a warm welcome you should not trust. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-wicker-man.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/28-years-later