28 Hours Later

28 Years Later (2025)

Guys, you know I am a massive Alex Garland fan, and you know I love Danny Boyle. The two have teamed up once again to produce the upcoming 28 Years Later, the two re-united since the original 28 Days Later. The film is to be released on June 20th, 2025. I am super excited to see the story continue… but where is 28 Months Later (what a missed opportunity) or perhaps release 28 Years Later in 2030 (literally 28 years later).

Just to give you a little background on each creator, Garland started his career with 28 Days Later, then went on to produce some of my favorite films: Dredd, Ex Machina, Civil War, and the great television series, Devs.

Boyle is no slouch either in my favorite film department, having directed some of my favorite films: Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and Slumdog Millionaire.

28 Years Later will actually be a trilogy of films: 28 Years Later, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and a third one not announced yet. The first one directed by Danny Boyle, while the sequel The Bone Temple will be directed by Nia DaCosta. Both films were written by Alex Garland.

I do love the original 28 Days Later, because the story is very good, and it came out when zombie movies were far and in-between. Unfortunately, the film suffers from the technology used to shoot the film in 2002. It looks bad, there’s no doubt about it. I own it on Bluray, but it looks terrible.

So I am really worried that 28 Years Later will look terrible in a few years, simply because the two films were shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max (with the aid of numerous attachments). Look, I own an iPhone 15 Pro Max, while the video looks great, I don’t know if I would make a movie, let alone two movies with it.

Still, watching the trailer for the upcoming film, it still looks pretty good for an iPhone movie.

Trivia: For two years, 28 Days Later was locked up in distribution rights. It was only this year (2024) that producer Andrew MacDonald bought the rights back from Searchlight Pictures and re-sold it to Sony, who only recently made the film available to purchase on digital and rental again on December 18, 2024.

Since I already own the original 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later on Vudu (Fandango at Home), I’ve decided to re-watch it.

28 Days Later (2002)

28 Days Later is the film that started it all. You have to remember that at the time (2002), zombie films weren’t all the rage (if you’ll excuse the expression)… and it’s often credit as reinvigorating the zombie genre with its fast-running zombies. All that despite the fact that the writer and director dismissed it as zombies. They’re infected with the “rage virus”.

I did end up watching the original 28 Days Later to refresh my memory, and right off the bat, the film hasn’t aged well. The digital technology that they used at the time just looks bad. At least with true film, they have the technology to rescan the original print in higher resolution, resulting in old 70s/80s film looking gorgeous for the modern age. With digital files, you’re pretty much stuck with the resolution that it was filmed at. So yeah, I can attest, the film doesn’t look good.

The film starts with Jim, a bicycle courier waking up from a coma to discover an apocalyptic-style London. Everything is in ruins and empty. He wanders the street in his hospital gown, and is soon chased by rage-induced humans. This opening reminds me of The Walking Dead, which I’m pretty sure writer Robert Kirkman stole this idea. In the Walking Dead, Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to find a world full of zombies.

He meets other survivors and somehow their journey would lead them to a military base. When they eventually make their way to the military base, you find out that these soldiers are only interested in luring women into their base and using them as sexual slaves. This third act of the film, where the bike courier, by himself, rescues the girls … that is the most unbelievable moment of the film. Up until now, I can believe the world is shut down due to a virus … but a bike courier taking out 20 armed military soldiers? Come on.

I thought I read somewhere that the original ending of 28 Days Later was that after saving the girls, they find out that he’s mortally wounded and so they end the film of Jim, on a hospital bed, dying… a nice bookend, circling back to the moment he wakes up from his coma at the beginning of the film. Instead, it’s a happy ending. The two girls and Jim are on a remote cottage and they had a huge banner saying HELLO to a flying airplane. Wouldn’t it make sense to have the banner say SOS or something shorter? Anyway, it’s a happy-ever-after ending.

I like it, it gave us hope that the story is told and done and the infected are all dying, due to hunger, “28 days later”.

28 Weeks Later (2007)

In my original mentioning of 28 Weeks Later in 2020, I mentioned that the film “improved over the original film – by expanding the original story. Everything in Weeks improved, from a bigger story, to upgrading the cheap home camera to widescreen… and felt like they had a point to make.”

There is no denying that Weeks and Days are two very different films with two different messages. While Days is a story about a journey and ultimately survival, Weeks is about the world adjusting to the rage virus.

I didn’t like Weeks as much, because Carlyle’s character is not a likeable character. He’s doing everything he can to live, including leaving his wife behind. The whole time you think this movie is about Carlyle… but it is not. Instead, the movie shifted to his children who arrives in London in a quarantine area. The children broke protocol and leaves the safety zone, only to inadvertently brought back the virus into the quarantined zone and ultimately killing everyone.

You find out that one of the kids are infected-free, he doesn’t show symptoms of the rage virus, although he is a carrier. Somehow, he is the key to finding a cure for the virus…

I think most fans will admit that this sequel wasn’t really necessary. If you had to watch it, it’s so different in terms of filming and direction and story, that it really could be a different film by itself. If they changed the title to Quarantine Rage, it would stand as its own film… but as a sequel to Days, it does pale in comparison. It is a shame, because they had a higher budget, they had higher quality filming equipment, and they had real cast of established actors. Bigger, better, faster… doesn’t always translate to success.

I found out later that the original director, Danny Boyle couldn’t work on Weeks because he was already committed to the Sci-Fi Horror film Sunshine. So, Boyle later hired Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, to work on Weeks to give it a “fresh new perspective” to the film. As a result, Weeks looked and felt very different from the original film.