Why the 28 Years Later Franchise Has Always Been About More Than Zombies

In 28 Years Later, the zombies are evolving. Scratch that— the infected are evolving. It may seem like an insignificant distinction, but the word choice has long meant something to director Danny Boyle, who has returned to helm the highly-anticipated third film in the post-apocalyptic horror franchise, nearly a quarter century after unleashing his innovative outbreak thriller 28 Days Later.
'We had this thing about, 'No, they're not zombies. They're infected,'' he says. 'We wanted them to behave in a different way physically, but they also weren't undead. They could die and they will die, but so will you if they catch you.'
Proper terminology notwithstanding, 28 Days Later became a big old zombie success story anyway. After hitting theaters in the U.K. in November 2002 then making its way across the pond the following June, Boyle's culture-shifting collaboration with screenwriter Alex Garland caught on like a contagion, earning more than $80 million worldwide against a reported budget of $8 million. Boyle's second movie based on a Garland novel or screenplay—following 2000's The Beach — 28 Days follows Cillian Murphy's bike courier Jim, who wakes up from a coma in an abandoned London hospital to find the so-called Rage Virus has devastated the U.K. The result of human experimentation on chimps gone wrong, it has left hordes of shockingly fast, uncontrollably aggressive, and rabidly bloodthirsty infected in its wake.
Now, over two decades later, 28 Years Later breathes new life into the franchise's infection allegory in a world that is still recovering from a years-long global pandemic. The original film may have been a smash in part due to its propulsive new take on a genre, but its appeal was never just its thrills and chills. The story remains a cautionary political tale about the ways in which people, when failed by institutions, resort to violence against one another.
28 Days Later reinvigorated zombies for the modern era by reimagining how the undead, or infected, were allowed to move. Gone were the slow, shambling monsters that George A. Romero's 1968 classic The Night of the Living Dead had established as the zombie status quo. Here instead were a new brand of barbaric creatures that could take chase at a terrifyingly relentless clip. 'It made a lot of sense that they would be much scarier if they could move at enormous speed,' Boyle says. 'But, at the time, that was quite a radical change.'
Boyle shot 28 Days ' deserted London scenes in July 2001, just a little over a month before 9/11, and says the circumstances surrounding its release changed the nature of the movie entirely. 'It was the first film that came out after that was really about citywide terror and the idea that these cities, which seem so incredibly permanent and magnificent and omnipotent, could be changed just like that,' he says. 'They could be robbed of the reason they have to be there, which is the people. Cities without people in them make no sense. So that's part of the reason we resisted the word 'zombie,' because it allowed us to create our own identity.'
What followed was a decade-plus boom of, sorry, zombie-related media that capitalized on the public's renewed interest in the horror subgenre. This period saw the release of horror hits like 2004's Dawn of the Dead, 2007's 28 Weeks Later (a sequel directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo on which Boyle and Garland served as executive producers), and 2013's World War Z. It also gave rise to beloved parody films like 2004's Shaun of the Dead and 2009's Zombieland. And it led to the trend successfully spreading to other mediums, as evidenced by 11 seasons of The Walking Dead TV series and video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and The Last of Us (which also went the infected route).
With 28 Years Later, in theaters June 20, Boyle returns to the scene of the outbreak nearly three decades after the Rage Virus first ravaged society. The new movie follows 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) as he leaves the safety of the secluded Holy Island community—a section of land connected to the U.K. mainland solely by a tidal causeway—to explore what lies beyond the only home he's ever known. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jodie Comer star as Spike's parents, Jamie and Isla, while Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Kelson, a mysterious survivor Spike encounters on his travels. Early on in the film, which was also written by Garland, we learn the infection was ultimately contained to the U.K., after it was quarantined and left to its own devices as the rest of the world moved on.
'We wanted to do something that forced us to look at our own land rather than having the virus become an international contagion, as was hinted at by 28 Weeks Later,' Boyle says. 'So we said, let's just make it based in the U.K. and, like in the first film, all the characters are British and they've all got to solve these problems themselves. There's no external force that's going to come in and save them.'
This narrative was partially inspired by Brexit, the U.K.'s 2020 withdrawal from the European Union, which Boyle refers to as the country 'looking backwards.' But the film's focus on the ways in which civilization would rebuild itself after an apocalyptic event was also greatly informed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
'When COVID first happened, we wore gloves, we disinfected groceries,' he says. 'But gradually over time, you start taking more risks. You don't stay in that super alert stage. You evolve. And so it is in 28 Years. They begin to take risks. Jamie takes his 12-year-old son to the mainland even though, as the mom says, that's f-cking crazy.'
The specter of COVID-19 also played a role in how the film depicts its characters paying tribute to those who were lost to the Rage Virus, particularly in a stunning physical monument best left to discover while watching the movie. 'That act of dignity humanizes us,' Boyle says. 'They're dead. They're gone. But you remember them and you honor them.'
Isla's concerns about Spike venturing away from home are justified. The infected are still everywhere, surviving after the virus acted like a steroid on certain individuals, resulting in a larger and stronger breed known as Alphas. 'The virus is alive, so it will mutate,' Boyle says. 'Because it expends so much energy in people, it has found hosts who have learned to hunt in order to feed that energy. And when you hunt, you organize. So they've begun to hunt in packs with Alphas as their leaders.'
Those types of primal instincts build on the infected archetype Garland and Boyle created: A far cry from mindless zombies limping along in search of brains, they're an altogether more terrifying threat to Spike and the rest of his community.
28 Years Later may appear to be arriving on the tail end of the zombie fad. But the appetite for this particular property seems undiminished. In December, the official 28 Years trailer earned the second most views in the first 24 hours after its release of any horror movie trailer ever, behind only the trailer for 2019's It Chapter Two. Following record ticket presales, it's also tracking for a franchise-best opening weekend of $34 million at the domestic box office.
Its appeal is bolstered by the fact that, in the 23 years since 28 Days Later, Boyle hasn't made anything remotely resembling a zombie movie. In the wake of 2004's Millions, his dramedy follow-up to 28 Days, Boyle went on to direct such major award contenders as 2008's Slumdog Millionaire (which took home the Oscar for Best Picture), 2010's 127 Hours, and 2015's Steve Jobs. To some, it may seem like there's no thematic throughline to Boyle's body of work. But the filmmaker says he was once persuasively informed otherwise.
'I was absolutely convinced that every film I made was completely different,' he says. 'Then I met this French journalist who told me, 'All your films are exactly the same. You have a protagonist, they're almost always male, and they face insurmountable odds before overcoming them.' And that's true.'
This time, the journey to overcome those odds will take three movies, beginning with 28 Years Later. After waiting so long to deliver a follow-up to their original offering, Boyle and Garland decided the rest of the story deserved to be told over the course of a trilogy. 'This idea came up of three films that are complete and satisfying in their own right, but are linked,' Boyle says. 'There's a character arc that runs throughout.'
While Garland is writing all three scripts, Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) was tapped to direct the second installment, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a decision Boyle says was intended to 'break up the boys club.' The Bone Temple was filmed back-to-back with its predecessor and is slated to hit theaters in January 2026. Boyle will then return to the director's seat for the third film, which he hints will be 'a bigger story about redemption' centered on Murphy's Jim, bringing the series full circle.
Three movies into this saga, with two still to come, does Boyle ultimately care how people classify his horror magnum opus? 'You can call it whatever you like,' he says. 'I just hope you enjoy it, and you feel it deserves to be there.'

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