The entirety of the UK is hit by a virus and placed in quarantine. A small community of survivors withdraws to an island to protect themselves from infection, and a strip of land connecting the island to the mainland - where the infected victims live - can only be crossed at low tide. Danny Boyle is returning to apocalyptic horror more than twenty years on from his cult film, 28 Days Later, which saw young Cillian Murphy waking up to a deserted version of London which had been devastated by the spread of a virus turning people into ferocious, zombie-like monsters. Having once again joined forces with Alex Garland – who co-wrote the first film - the director also responsible for Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire [+lee también:
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Memento mori, we’re reminded by the film, which is hitting Italian cinemas on 18 June via Eagle Pictures and landing in British cinemas via Sony Pictures, but also memento amoris: remember to love. For Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams), love is embodied by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) but especially by his mother Isla (Jodie Comer, the recipient of multiple trophies for her role in the series Killing Eve), who has a mysterious illness which is impossible to diagnose because they haven’t had any doctors on the island for quite some time. It’s an archaic community where the men go off hunting and, despite his young age, the time has now come for Spike to pick up a bow and arrow and fight for his survival: in other words, head to the mainland in search of supplies and kill all the infected creatures who cross his path. His father will be his guide. Waved off by the entire community, the pair cross the enormous portal which separates and protects the island from the rest of the world, knowing that if they fail to return home, no-one can come looking for them. The expedition proves successful, but when Spike learns there’s a doctor on the mainland, his focus suddenly switches to saving his mother.

His love for his mother is what drives the boy to take a different path from the one his father has mapped out for him. His encounter with Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes, coated in red-orange iodine to protect himself from the infected victims and acting as the guardian of the victims’ memory) will prove decisive for Spike in his passage to adulthood and in his new life.

28 Years Later is the first chapter in a new trilogy set in the world of 28 Days Later. The second film, 28 Years Later – The Bone Temple, has already been shot and will be released in January 2026, directed by Nia DaCosta (Boyle might return to direct the third instalment which is currently in the funding phase). Partly shot on an iPhone (in several sequences, 20 are used simultaneously, some of which held by the actors themselves), the film is an immersive, visually challenging and sufficiently horrific experience (the virus has produced variants among the infected, from slow, creeping creatures to gigantic and incredibly fast “Alphas”), with the music pounding during the many action scenes (the score comes courtesy of Scottish progressive hip hop group Young Fathers). Narratively speaking, the film plays more on emotions than on possible political suggestions, but the truncated finale leaves us on a cliffhanger for the following chapter, giving the impression that the ground has been laid with this first film and that the best is yet to come.

28 Years Later was produced by British firms DNA Films and Decibel Films alongside Columbia Pictures (USA). Sony Pictures is distributing the film worldwide.