Ask 12 people the purpose of science fiction and you’ll get 13 different answers, but two likely agreed-upon definitions are ever-present in 28 Years Later. The first is to reflect contemporary anxieties — which a story of a deadly virus is sure to do just five years removed from the COVID-19 breakout. The second is to show us things we’ve never seen before, and it may surprise you to learn just how much Danny Boyle’s entertaining, poignant, seemingly grounded zombie sequel adheres to this tenet. It’s an amusingly strange (and appropriately strange-looking) horror blockbuster that may as well take place in an alien world, despite feeling uncannily familiar.
Packed to the gills with themes and ideas that shouldn’t mix, the third part in the series (and the first entry in a brand-new trilogy) is both visually and narrative propulsive, in ways that make it a delightful oddity. Boyle returns to the director’s chair alongside screenwriter Alex Garland, whose collaboration on the gritty, lo-fi 28 Days Later (2002) helped resurrect the zombie subgenre and popularized sprinting “rage zombies.” The beginnings of their original apocalypse can be glimpsed in the sequel’s prologue, which opens on a group of terrified children watching the world go bye-bye. Numerous flailing, blood-puking “Infected” tear through a sequestered living room in a scene that’s appropriately jolting and surprisingly fun to watch.
