Merthyr actor Sam Locke in Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later
Sam Locke, from Merthyr Tydfil, appears in 28 Years Later, the latest instalment in Danny Boyle's acclaimed zombie thriller series.
He was sat at home with his family who gave him advice to not be disheartened if he didn't get the role.
Mr Locke said: "Then, about ten minutes later, my agent called to say I'd got it, and there was a lot of excitement."
The actor walked the red carpet at the film's premiere in Leicester Square on Wednesday night.
Mr Locke said: "It was such a surreal experience.
"There I was, standing in Leicester Square, surrounded by all these incredible people.
"It was a moment I'll never forget."
He credits his grandmother, Wendy, for spotting the casting call and supporting his journey into acting.
She also helped him record his self-tape for the audition.
Mr Locke said: "She's been there for me through everything.
"She even helped me with the self-tape for 28 Years Later.
"Maybe with a bit of training, she'll land a role in a future Danny Boyle film."
He recently appeared alongside Michael Sheen in the TV drama The Way.
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South Wales Argus
7 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
Merthyr actor Sam Locke in Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later
Sam Locke, from Merthyr Tydfil, appears in 28 Years Later, the latest instalment in Danny Boyle's acclaimed zombie thriller series. He was sat at home with his family who gave him advice to not be disheartened if he didn't get the role. Mr Locke said: "Then, about ten minutes later, my agent called to say I'd got it, and there was a lot of excitement." The actor walked the red carpet at the film's premiere in Leicester Square on Wednesday night. Mr Locke said: "It was such a surreal experience. "There I was, standing in Leicester Square, surrounded by all these incredible people. "It was a moment I'll never forget." He credits his grandmother, Wendy, for spotting the casting call and supporting his journey into acting. She also helped him record his self-tape for the audition. Mr Locke said: "She's been there for me through everything. "She even helped me with the self-tape for 28 Years Later. "Maybe with a bit of training, she'll land a role in a future Danny Boyle film." He recently appeared alongside Michael Sheen in the TV drama The Way.
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Daily Mail
28 Years Later fans say they're WILDLY distracted by zombie's surprising appendage
Fans of a popular movie series said they were constantly being distracted from the sequel film's plot because one of the zombies kept flaunting his surprisingly large penis. 28 Years Later, which came out Friday, is the follow-up to 28 Days Later, a 2002 apocalypse film starring Cillian Murphy. The premise is that Murphy's character, a bicycle courier, wakes up 28 days after a highly contagious virus was released, causing society in Britain to collapse. The sequel, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes, focused on a small group of survivors of the so-called 'Rage Virus' 28 years after the initial outbreak. Throughout the 2025 film, the group is repeatedly pursued by the Alpha, the noticeably hung zombie that has caught the attention of people on social media. The Alpha is presumably the leader of the infected and is bigger, stronger and obviously more well-endowed than his counterparts. Dr. Kelson, one of the survivors played by Fiennes, calls him Samson, a reference to the biblical hero of the same name known for his extraordinary strength and his battles against the Philistines. The Alpha certainly lives up to his name, as he is able to withstand barrages of arrows and pull off the heads of humans with their spines still attached. But the Alpha's power in that department was largely ignored by social media users, nearly all of whom were thoroughly focused on his downstairs anatomy. Many threw around the joke that the film should have been called 28 Inches Later. One commenter pointed out that the constant full frontal male nudity was only possible because the zombies were wearing no clothes. According to the movie's logic, they were nude because the clothes they had been wearing had degraded in the decades since they were infected. 'The infected in 28 years later don't wear clothes and it's one infected who got like a 10 incher,' they wrote. Another person compared the Alpha to Jason Momoa in looks, though the famous actor wasn't actually in the movie. 'Went to 28 years later. Wasn't expecting to see a well hung Jason Momoa zombie throughout the whole thing lmao,' they wrote. Someone else began to write what seemed like a legitimate review of the movie, only to mention the penis once more. '28 Years Later is a hauntingly beautiful, deeply affecting evolution of the franchise. There's horror and dread, but also strangely stunning moments of beauty and a giant zombie dong. Well worth the wait,' the person wrote. But the Alpha's power in that department was largely ignored by social media users, nearly all of whom were thoroughly focused on his downstairs anatomy Behind the scenes, it was a nightmare to film the movie, said Director Danny Boyle. That's because with all the extras playing nude zombies, the film crew needed to take extra care to protect the film's child star, Alfie Williams. Boyle told PEOPLE: 'I mean, if you're recently infected [with the zombie virus], you'd have some clothes, but if you've been infected for a long time, the clothes would just disintegrate with the way that you behave. 'We never knew [about rules governing nudity on set when there's a child present] going in, it was a nightmare.' In order to still film scenes featuring naked zombies while adhering to the safeguarding rules, Boyle revealed the actors had to wear prosthetics. 'Interestingly, because there was a 12-year-old boy on set, you're not allowed for anybody to be naked, not really naked, so they look naked, but it's all prosthetics,' he shared. 'So it's like: ''Oh my God,'' so we had to make everybody prosthetic genitals.' Boyle said he was keen to push boundaries with the elements of nudity and gore in the film, and he's glad studio bosses were supportive of his plans. So far, 28 Years Later has been well received, with an 89 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Times
12 hours ago
- Times
28 Years Later — it's like a zombie movie made by Ken Loach
It can't be — can it — after all this time? Nostalgic pop-culture references to the old Tango adverts and the Teletubbies. Fancy freeze-frames and lickety-split editing. A banging mixtape of ambient house on the soundtrack so that even when the characters are battling for their life against zombies the audience feel like they are tying one on at the Haçienda on a Saturday night with their mates. It has to be … yes, it's a Danny Boyle film. Last seen directing Yesterday in 2019, Boyle returns to screens this week with 28 Years Later, an unusually thoughtful sequel to his 2002 classic 28 Days Later, which shows much has changed since the zombie apocalypse — sorry, Rage Virus — was first loosed on the world. England is now cut off from the rest of Europe and a small group of the uninfected are holed up on an island. It's a community that defends itself with homemade bows and arrows and has returned to the values of the 1950s including waving St George's flags. Boyle splices their defence of the fortified causeway that leads to the mainland with snatches of footage from the Battle of Agincourt in Laurence Olivier's 1944 film Henry V. We seem to be in one of those remote Hebridean communities beloved of old folk-horror films where villagers worship pagan gods, copulate in the fields and cure sore throats with toads. If George A Romero's zombie movies in the Seventies set themselves up as allegories of mass-market consumerism, Boyle's seem to be about the Little Englander belligerence that fuelled Brexit. These zombies don't want to eat our brains, just our unbendy cucumbers. • Danny Boyle: Road rage, Brexit — and why I'm returning to 28 Days Later Tutoring his son, Spike (Alfie Williams), in the ways of the postapocalyptic patriarchy is Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), whose sick wife, Isla (Jodie Comer), languishes in the bedroom upstairs. He takes his son on his first trip to the mainland to hunt for zombies, a blood sport-cum-rite of passage for the island's young men. 'The more you kill the easier it gets,' Jamie tells him, but there's a new breed of 'alpha zombie': big, naked brutes who run like the clappers, willies bouncing, who seem to represent all the coarse male energies at large in this postapocalyptic world. The screenwriter Alex Garland has bigger issues in his sights than just zombies. After Spike cottons on to his father's lies and escapes to the mainland with his mother in the hope of finding a cure for what ails her, the film downshifts into an odyssey that owes as much to Garland's Civil War last year as to the original 2002 Boyle film. The mother and son's journey is punctuated by images of societal breakdown — an abandoned Happy Eater roadside café, a rusting train carriage, a compound of human bones ruled by a bald, blood-and-mud-encrusted doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who raves about the 'magic of the placenta' in the crackpot fashion of Colonel Kurtz. • The best films of 2025 so far Garland's copy of Heart of Darkness must be well thumbed. Joseph Conrad's novella provided much of the thematic superstructure of The Beach as well. Do the slim fillets of action justify the weightier themes that are hung on them? He and Boyle are trying to make a wider statement about societal collapse — it's like a zombie movie made by Ken Loach. But what will gamers make of the gentle, ruminative climax? My guess is a slight but unshakeable feeling of bamboozlement. Boyle adds a bloody coda of zombie slaughter, freeze-framing on every arterial spray and brain splatter, just to be on the safe side. ★★★☆☆15, 115min Disney Pixar hits most of its marks, but not all. Elio is about an orphaned 11-year-old, Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab), now in the care of his aunt (Zoe Saldaña), who channels his loneliness and longing into the sky. Sending messages using a ham radio and a colander for aliens to come and beam him up, he is one day granted that wish by a benevolent collective of alien races known as the Communiverse, who are facing down a threat from a warlord called Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who looks like a crab crossed with a Swiss army knife with plasma cannon for limbs. Anyone recalling the showdowns between Donald Trump and the United Nations would not be far off. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews The film gives kids a framework to understand the world's strong men — beneath his military-grade exoskeleton, Lord Grigon turns out to be a soft, caterpillar-like sweetheart — but suffers from the Pixar blight of too many bright ideas, an excess of benevolence and a story that doesn't know which lane to pick. We're almost 50 minutes into the film before we meet Grigon's pudgy, pacifist son, Glordon, whose friendship with Elio should have been the emotional core of the film. But they have to wait their turn in a plot set on heartwarming reconciliations for everyone — Elio and his aunt, Glordon and his dad, Grigon and the Communiverse. These things were so much simpler in ET's day. In this film, everyone has a heart light. ★★★☆☆PG, 99min Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit to find out moreWhich films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments below and follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
