Danny Boyle on 28 Years Later: ‘Zombie movies are a reflection of society’

You don’t need zombies for a zombie movie. Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, 28 Days Later petrified audiences in 2002 with Cillian Murphy having to outrun rapid, sprinting humans who had been infected by the rage virus. As they weren’t dead, these fast zombies weren’t technically zombies. “With that first film, ‘zombie’ had a very particular meaning, and we wanted to distance ourselves from that,” says Boyle. “We had something that was more modern.”

23 years later, we have 28 Years Later, a sort of sequel that once again has Boyle directing from a Garland script. Over time, Boyle has remained picky about the wording. “I still think it’s better not to call them zombies,” the 68-year-old English director tells me in the Corinthia Hotel two days before the film comes out in cinemas. “We’re within that genre, but ours are very much sick people with an infection. It’s manifested itself as rage, as intolerance against other people, rather than being about being dead or undead.”

28 Years Later is the first of a proposed trilogy – the next film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, has already been shot by Nia DaCosta and comes out in January 2026 – while also being the third in the overall series. Or, in a way, it’s the second. The 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, which Juan Carlos Fresnadillo directed, has been more or less ignored. Whereas 28 Weeks Later went bigger and louder with military involvement and the infected reaching the Eiffel Tower, 28 Years Later confines the action to rural Britain. Europe has isolated the rage virus to the land of Brexit; nearly three decades on, survivors have formed their own insular, British societies.

Boyle tells me that the impetus for 28 Weeks Later was road rage, hence the name of the virus. “We took this idea of a particular kind of behaviour in motorcars, and extrapolated it into a disease,” he says. “And now the rage virus seems more applicable than ever. It’s not just about being in a car. People leaping to furious anger – it’s everywhere. That’s what it seems like [in Britain]. It’s certainly the same in America. Intolerance has grown. Whether that’s to do with technology, I don’t know.”

Despite Boyle making his name with Trainspotting, a film in which a baby crawls on the ceiling before it dies, he’s an impressively cheery figure. He’s also, apart from Mia Wasikowska, the only interviewee to greet me at the door and walk me out to the corridor once I’m done. That same energy is all over 28 Years Later: chase scenes are kinetic and propulsive; some cameos are so peculiar, you can’t help but laugh out loud. There’s also a hint Garland wrote it alongside his last three films: it has the loneliness of Men, the societal collapse of Civil War, and the cruelty of Warfare. If I had to rate 28 Years Later out of 35, I’d give it 28.

The new film also has a kidlike sense of mischief amidst the bleakness. I note that Boyle followed up 28 Days Later with Millions, a family comedy about a nine-year-old boy. In a way, 28 Years Later combines both: its protagonist is 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), the son of Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer). “It’s got a weird bit of the Millions spirit,” says Boyle, agreeing. “It was tough looking for the kids in Millions. Now, there’s a whole generation of kids who look at the Harry Potter films, and go, ‘I could do that.’ Many more kids think they’re capable, and the standard is higher. Alfie was exceptional among them.”

The rage virus seems more applicable than ever... People leaping to furious anger – it’s everywhere. That’s what it seems like [in Britain]. It’s certainly the same in America. Intolerance has grown. Whether that’s to do with technology, I don’t know

On Holy Island in North-East England, Spike’s family is part of a small community who survive with rations, no devices, and a system guarding entry points. In the first 28 or so minutes, Alfie is taught by his father how to venture out into the mainland and kill the infected with an arrow; later, Alfie embarks on his own quest to find a doctor. It’s clear that Boyle, who’s directed sci-fi horror (Sunshine), Oscar-friendly dramas (Steve Jobs, Slumdog Millionaire), and films where James Franco cuts off his arm (127 Hours), is comfortable shifting tones: different sections are redolent of Mike Leigh and Resident Evil. “If you’re working within a genre you’ve been in before, you try to deal with it differently,” says Boyle. “You’re trying to surprise people as much as you can.”

28 Days Later was shot on DV cameras, making a Blu-Ray copy indistinguishable from a pirated stream on Dailymotion. However, its final scene – Murphy running around in greenery – was done on 35mm, capturing the catharsis in all its grainy glory. For 28 Years Later, Boyle used iPhones – sometimes 20 at the same time, with a special rig. The idea for 28 Days Later was that a sci-fi disaster in 2002 would be captured by camcorders, whereas in 2025, it’d be on iPhones. (By that logic, a zombie outbreak at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards would look stunning.)

I ask Boyle if going from the 35mm ending of 28 Days Later to the iPhone for 28 Weeks Later is an indication Britain has gone backwards. “It’s just embracing new technology,” he says. “Film is beautiful, but it’s an incredibly wasteful, poisonous process by which it’s chemically made and developed. But the principal reason was to have lightweight cameras that allowed us to move into areas of natural beauty, disturbing them as little as possible, so that it looked like virgin land because of the 28 years that have passed.” The cinematographer is Anthony Dod Mantle, who lensed Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen and thus created the Dogme 95 aesthetic. “He is without doubt the world’s leading digital cinematographer. He’d rather shoot on 35mm but directors like me want him to experiment with the technology.”

The iPhones also allow for quick cutting and deliberate disorientation when a single moment is captured from multiple unexpected angles. I compare it to the aftermath of finding a mouse in your home: your eye keeps looking around out of paranoia. “I know! I’ve had a mouse recently, and you’re like…” Boyle mimes the anxiety. “Big digital cameras or film cameras make what you watch feel reassuring. But it’s good for a horror film when you’re can’t trust the technology.”

I tell Boyle about a routinely mocked clip from Taken 3 in which Liam Neeson jumps over a fence: in six seconds, there are 16 cuts. Conversely, Boyle establishes the visual geography before the frenetic editing. “Often, those techniques are to hide inadequacies, but we’re not trying to hide anything. What I try to do is make the form and content reflect each other, rather than just impose a style on something.” Will he use an iPhone for the third film in the trilogy? “I don’t know. It won’t get written until we get an offer of the money. That will depend on how this film does over the next few weekends.”

The conversation strays into spoiler-y territory, namely a sequence involving a gun pointed at a baby that might be infected, and whether Sony had any instructions. “They’re more bothered by the penises than they are about killing children,” says Boyle, who compares some scenes to the feeling of re-entering the world after lockdown during COVID. “Your initial alertness relaxes, and you begin to take risks. You see how far you can stretch things and still remain safe.” In contrast, a visiting Swedish soldier, Erik (Edvin Ryding), insists the baby must die. “Erik represents that immediate ‘FUCK! KILL IT! FUCK!!!!’”

28 Years Later, then, is a dissection of Brexit Britain, its growing intolerance, and its handling of the pandemic. “Zombie movies have a lovely transparency,” says Boyle. “Concerns you have about racism, over-commercialisation, Brexit – you can lay them over the movies and they complement each other. They’re not Political films with a big ‘P’, but they’re clearly a reflection of society.”

28 Years Later is out in UK cinemas on June 19