Later this month, horror fans will finally get their eyes on Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later in its return to the universe of the Rage Virus as it hits cinemas worldwide. Before the highly anticipated film is shown on the big screen, its director talks about how the film mirrors some elements of our current climate and reveals what the island actually represents.
Written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, who also helmed Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Years Later will star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer, as fans are once again plunged back into its terrifying world of bloodthirsty infected. Although zombie movies weren't such a common genre back in 2002 when 28 Days Later was first released, Boyle's highly popular universe crafted something so special that the film received a sequel, 28 Weeks Later, five years later. Just when most people thought the zombie genre had seen its days due to the market becoming so saturated with brain-rotting walking corpses, 28 Years Later's YouTube trailer gained 60.2 million global views in its first 24 hours and later became the best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025. Now, with only days to go before the film's big reveal, all eyes are on Boyle's next endeavor, but how much of it is based on real-world events? Quite a bit, surprisingly.
28 Years Later Teases New Harrowing Image and Fans Think It Includes One Gruesome Detail
Fans think that a new image from the 28 Years Later movie might include one horrifying detail about a character.
28 Years Later Entwines Current Real World Events Without Meaning To
Speaking with Comicbook, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland revealed that due to when 28 Years Later was being developed, current world events had an influence on its storytelling. Although Boyle explained that he didn't "set out to make a big political movie", events like what's happening in Gaza, what the world went through while Covid happened, and Brexit, in terms of politics, seeped into the movie on some scale. Boyle explained that because of how long it takes to make a horror movie, by the time it comes out, things have changed around the world again. "You may focus on individual details around the world and around people’s own experiences on the day. But, you know, six months, a year later, they’ve changed,”
“We didn’t set out to make a big political movie. We set out to make a really compelling story, which owed a little to the original, but stood on its own as a moviegoing experience.”
Boyle said that the island setting in 28 Years Later could be looked at in terms of Brexit and its political circumstances."The isolation of the island, even though it’s an imposed isolation in our story, and it’s a chosen isolation in the political (sphere).” Boyle particularly notes that he loves the horror genre because viewers can take away so many different elements and experiences, and this will change from person to person. “[Horror] has that flexibility where you can read things into it, and it’s transparent at times to another world, and then it closes again. And that’s beautiful,” said Boyle.
Recently, Garland said that The Last of Us had a big influence on 28 Years Later. As well as taking some inspiration from Clickers and Stalkers, Garland's new story features a child-parent dynamic between Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams), which is reminiscent of Joel and Ellie's adventures in the wilderness. 28 Years Later will be released in theaters on June 20, 2025.
‘It Reminded Me How Much I Love Zombie Movies’ 28 Years Later Writer Reveals Iconic Horror Games That Inspired the Franchise's Terrifying Infected
28 Years Later writer, Alex Garland, talks about the video game that helped inspire its terrifying rage zombies.
- Release Date
- June 20, 2025
- Runtime
- 126 minutes
- Director
- Danny Boyle
- Writers
- Danny Boyle, Alex Garland
- Producers
- Alex Garland, Andrew Macdonald, Bernard Bellew
- Prequel(s)
- 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later
- Franchise(s)
- 28 Days Later
Cast
-
Jodie ComerIsla -
Aaron Taylor-JohnsonJamie
WHERE TO WATCH
Source: Comicbook