28 Years Later (2025)

I went into 28 Years Later with high expectations. I love 28 Days Later, and I even have a lot of affection for 28 Weeks Later, so getting Danny Boyle back in this world sounded like exactly what I wanted. There is no question that Boyle knows how to make a movie look interesting. There are some striking images here, the performances are good, and I appreciate that the film is trying to do something more ambitious than simply repeat the original. My problem is that I never felt all those ideas came together into a satisfying movie.

The shift toward a coming-of-age story and questions about mortality is not a bad idea on paper. Horror can absolutely tackle those subjects. I just wanted more of the survival tension and dread that made this series work for me in the first place. There are infected running around, and the film introduces some interesting changes to them, but those elements often felt secondary to a story that kept pulling me in directions I wasn’t particularly invested in. I found myself asking more questions about the choices people were making than getting caught up in what they were going through.

That was probably the most frustrating part: I could see the craftsmanship without really feeling the impact. There are moments clearly intended to be emotional, but they didn’t land the way I think the movie wanted them to. A few choices also left me confused rather than intrigued. I don’t need everything explained, especially in a horror movie, but I do need to feel like the story has earned its bigger moments.

I’m not going to tell horror fans to avoid 28 Years Later. There are enough interesting things happening visually and thematically that someone else may connect with it completely differently. I might even give it another watch to see whether my expectations got in the way. As a return to a franchise I’ve wanted to revisit for years, though, this one missed the mark for me.

I was so excited to see 28 Years Later. We went in ready for a movie we had waited a long time to watch, and by the end I was honestly wondering what I had just watched. It’s not that the movie looks bad or that the people in it can’t act. It looks great. I just didn’t enjoy the story, and I never got the kind of scary experience I thought I was going to get.

I knew there would be infected people, danger, and some pretty gross things happening. I can handle that when a movie is entertaining enough to make it worthwhile. This one has some shocking images, but they weren’t really the kind of scares that have me covering my ears or peeking out from behind my hands. A lot of the time I was more confused than scared. I kept wondering why people were doing certain things and how some of their decisions made sense. Instead of being caught up in the danger, I was questioning what was happening on screen.

The movie also spends a lot of time on heavier ideas and family drama. I understand that those things can make a horror movie better, and I’m not saying every movie needs nonstop jump scares. I do need something to connect with, though, whether that’s the characters, the story, some suspense, or even a little humor. Here, I didn’t connect with enough of it. There were moments that seemed like they were supposed to make me emotional, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

By the time it was over, I wasn’t thinking about all the things I wanted to see again. I was thinking about how good my snacks had been. That’s not exactly the reaction I wanted to have to a movie we’d been looking forward to this much. I know some people loved it, and I’m glad it worked for them. For me, it was a long way from the experience I was hoping to have, and I don’t feel any need to watch it again.