For many viewers hoping for a non-stop thrill ride with 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s long-awaited return to the zombie franchise that began with the wildly influential 28 Days Later, its somber third-act turn may have been a bit of a headscratcher. The brawny battle of humans versus Infected was replaced with a meditative tribute to life, memory, and whatever is left of our dwindling humanity.
But as confounding as this pivot may have seemed, 28 Years Later, for all its bombastic action sequences and gory thrills, was a much more thoughtful horror movie than many gave it credit for. It planted the seeds for its deeper themes about the degradation of humanity in the wake of the apocalypse — seeds that come to brutal, bloody bloom in Nia DaCosta’s sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
