The new trailer for director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s horror sequel 28 Years Later is exceedingly good.
Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland brought a distinctly British flavour to their influential 2002 horror, 28 Days Later, and it’s something they’ve clearly captured again in their belated sequel. The trailer for 28 Years Later (see below) begins with a shot of Victorian terrace houses before cutting to footage of the Teletubbies, then later introduces some eerie poetry courtesy of British writer Rudyard Kipling. You don’t get sights and sounds like these in a Blumhouse movie.
As the title implies, 28 Years Later takes place a generation after the original film’s events, in which a Rage virus sent much of the UK into a self-cannibalising meltdown. With the initial outbreak having petered out somewhat, the survivors now live in what appear to be fortified communities far outside the UK’s more populated areas.
The virus seems to be on the rise again by the time of the new film’s events, though, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer being among the survivors. The almost pre-industrial community we see earlier in the trailer – all horse-drawn ploughs and quivers filled with arrows – is later contrasted by a detachment of heavily-armed soldiers. It’s not clear whether they’re from elsewhere in the country or whether they’ve swooped in from the outside world, like the US military seen in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later.
Even more intriguing is a brief shot of a skeletal figure that other outlets insist is Cillian Murphy. If it’s really him, then the reports that Murphy is set to appear in the two planned follow-ups to 28 Years Later suggest they might end up being prequels. Either that or he’ll turn out to be less doomed than he appears here. (Update: it almost certainly isn’t Cillian Murphy.)
Also intriguing: the shots of a huge structure made from skulls and human remains. This is almost certainly what’s being referred to in 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple – the Nia Da Costa-directed sequel which is already in production. What exactly is this temple? Here’s a bit of speculation we published earlier this year:
In [Richard Matheson’s novel] I Am Legend, a pandemic turns the citizens of North America (and possibly the whole planet) into vampiric, blood-sucking monsters. Years after the virus took hold, however, the infected are no longer mere monsters, but have begun to organise themselves into a new kind of society. Might some of those infected by Rage have done something similar after almost three decades? The Bone Temple subtitle could suggest they’ve come up with their own warped religion.
Speculation aside, it’s an arresting trailer. It suggests we’re in for a less grungy, more aesthetically polished horror than the 2002 original (28 Years Later was shot on iPhones, but digital cameras have come along way from the fuzzy, jagged look of that earlier movie). There are flashes of black humour (blood spattered across a TV playing Teletubbies sets the stall out early) and ominous twists (a fleshy, undulating shape covered in soil).
The chant-like rhythm of Taylor Holmes, reading out the Rudyard Kipling anti-war poem Boots, also hints at the same flashes of cynicism and despair Garland brought to 28 Days Later and his more recent work, not least this year’s withering Civil War. And let’s face it, what could be more quintessentially British than that?
28 Years Later is out in British cinemas on the 20th June 2025.
