28 Years Later (2025)

28 Years Later Movie Review

Bear Hands (author)

Hubby Bear

…where are the missing months??

There is something quietly tragic about watching a once-brilliant concept stumble back onto the screen wearing the borrowed dignity of its predecessors. 28 Years Later seems content — no, determined — to coast on the cult devotion of the original films, as though nostalgia alone can carry an entire feature. The result is less a continuation and more a two-hour prologue announcing, with the subtlety of a foghorn, that the true story will be told in the sequel. And perhaps the sequel after that. And the spinoff miniseries. And the prequel to the spinoff. One could almost weep.

The film’s primary accomplishment is establishing that the United Kingdom has, somehow, become even more of a dystopian nightmare than before — a point delivered with just enough gravity to feel important, and just enough hollowness to feel suspiciously like groundwork for yet another unending franchise. One longs for the era when a film endeavored to stand on its own rather than laying a breadcrumb trail of meaningless micro-cliffhangers like some desperate cinematic squirrel storing plot seeds for winter.

And yet, the experience isn’t without its charms. Ralph Fiennes graces the screen with the sort of gravitas that reminds you cinema once aspired to greatness. Aaron Taylor-Johnson continues his mission to appear in every third major release of the decade, a delightful consistency in an otherwise inconsistent world. Their presence is welcome — much like fine wine served alongside a meal one suspects the chef prepared begrudgingly.

Still, for all its attempts at somber reflection and expanded lore, 28 Years Later struggles to introduce a single new character compelling enough to justify the breathless anticipation it clearly expects of us. One leaves the theater feeling simultaneously entertained, nostalgic, and resentful — a trifecta only modern franchise filmmaking seems truly capable of achieving.

It is, in summary, pleasant enough. But one can’t shake the melancholy truth: watching a classic dragged into the gnashing machinery of cinematic franchising is rather like seeing a beloved old friend join a multilevel marketing scheme.