It may not have been 28 years since Danny Boyle last had a film in cinemas, but it kind of felt that way. The British filmmaker has been out of action since 2019, when he headed up the commercially successful but critically scoffed-at Yesterday – a jukebox musical imagining an alternate reality in which The Beatles never existed, except in the memory of one (slightly unscrupulous) man. The film was sappy and spurious, and its central hypothetical seemed to crumble under the slightest prodding: a scene in which protagonist singer Jack (Himesh Patel) meets a still-alive, un-assassinated John Lennon was immediately infamous. Boyle, once the embodiment of edgy and forward-looking British cinema, had never seemed less cool.
Last week, however, saw the release of 28 Years Later – the long-awaited sequel to the grimy 2002 zombie hit 28 Days Later, directed by Boyle and written by Civil War’s Alex Garland. The film largely ignores the 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, made without Boyle and Garland, and is the first in a planned trilogy; the second new entry, directed by Candyman’s Nia DaCosta, has already been shot and is out in January of next year. It’s a welcome surprise, then, that 28 Years Later is a coruscating return to form for Boyle – a dynamic, unpredictable and soul-stirring undertaking. But in its final stretch, the film takes a hard lurch into the unknown, delivering what The Independent's Adam White described in last week’s Saturday Interview as “undoubtedly the strangest and most unexpectedly horrifying last few minutes of a major studio film in recent memory”. If you haven’t seen the film, and don’t wish it to be spoilt, stop reading now.
