More than two decades after 28 Days Later redefined zombie cinema, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have returned to the bleak, rage-filled world they helped create, only this time, they’re going bigger.
Spoilers ahead!
28 Years Later, the first of a planned new trilogy, has hit theaters, and it’s not shy about pushing boundaries. From extreme gore to full-on zombie nudity, the filmmakers aren’t pulling punches, and surprisingly, the studio didn’t ask them to.
“We had a bit of back-and-forth,” Boyle admits, “but Tom Rothman at Sony really backed the vision. Horror expects you to push things to the edge. You want brutality, sure—but you also want contrast. That’s why we layered the violence against children’s innocence and beautiful landscapes. It stretches the story as far as it can go.”
The story follows a family, played by Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Alfie Williams leaving their isolated island for the infected mainland. It doesn’t take long for things to spiral into chaos.
One major surprise comes in the final act when Jack O’Connell’s Jimmy Crystal reappears as a cult leader, a twist that tees up the second film, already shot by director Nia DaCosta and set for a January 16 release. I loved the ending of this film!
Garland explains that Jimmy, and the film as a whole, was born from the team’s reflection on nostalgia and distorted memory. “This trilogy is about how we look backward. People cherry-pick, forget, or misremember history. That distortion is baked into the world and the characters. Jimmy is just one face of that cultural regression.”
The filmmakers actually started down a different path post-COVID. “I had a go at a script,” Garland says, “but it was too generic. That failure let us think bigger, and the story we landed on felt right. It’s much broader in scope.”
As for the trilogy’s future? It’s in motion, but far from set in stone.
“The script for the third one isn’t written,” Garland says. “There’s a plan, a structure, a through-line with certain characters, but each film also stands alone. It’s kind of like TV—things evolve as you shoot. You need to see how it all lands.”
Cillian Murphy, who starred in 28 Days Later, has returned as an executive producer and will play a larger role in the final installment. “He’s briefly in Nia’s film,” Boyle reveals, “but the plan is for him to have a major presence in the third.”
The duo has also noticed how the landscape of horror, and its audience, has changed.
“When we made the first film, someone told us, ‘No women will watch this,’” Boyle recalls. “That was dead wrong. Women are now a huge part of the horror audience, and that’s helped the genre stay alive. Horror still thrives in theaters, and that communal experience—being scared together in the dark—is powerful. We need to protect that.”
With the second chapter already on its way and the third looming, it’s clear Boyle and Garland are thinking long-term. Not just about scares, but about the emotional and cultural depth that gives the horror genre its bite.
And if 28 Years Later is any indication, they’re not interested in playing it safe.
Source: Variety
