| Worth seeing: | for the camp heavy metal showdown between Ralph Fiennes enigmatic doctor and Jack O'Connell's Jimmy Savile-like cult leader |
| Director: | Nia DaCosta |
| Featuring: | Alfie Williams, Jack O'Connell, Ralph Fiennes, Chi Lewis-Parry, David Sterne, Elliot Benn, Emma Laird, Erin Kellyman, Ghazi Al Ruffai, Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Maura Bird, Natalie Cousteau, Robert Rhodes, Sam Locke |
| Length: | 109 minutes |
| Certificate: | 18 |
| Country: | UK, US |
| Released: | 16th January 2026 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
28 years after the Rage virus confined most of the healthy UK population to Holy Island off the coast of Northumberland, 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams), made a break for the mainland, where he met the enigmatic Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) in his “Bone Temple” and encountered a creepy cult of Jimmy Savile lookalikes, led by – well – Sir Jimmy (Jack O’Connell).
This is where we meet Alfie again, having to stand up for himself against this gang of violent misfits, who maraud across the local countryside, stealing what they can from the remaining outposts of humans, killing them as they move on. Alfie – unsurprisingly – doesn’t fit in, but has no choice but to try, to stay alive.
Not too far away, Dr Kelson is still living alone, in a shelter beneath his Bone Temple – a monument to those who’ve been killed by the Rage virus and the zombies it created. He devotes most of his efforts to trying to tame the zombies, to see if there’s some way that the virus can be reversed.
Sir Jimmy’s credibility as a ruthless leader is put to the test when his group finds Dr Kelson, setting up a nihilistic clash that cannot end well, as Alfie watches from the sidelines.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
We had to wait – understandably perhaps – 18, if not 27 and a half years, between 28 Weeks Later and 28 Years later – but the follow-up has come just seven months later, filmed at the same time, but by a different director, with Candyman and The Marvels’ Nia DaCosta taking over the helm from the creator of the franchise, Danny Boyle.
While it’s ostensibly a continuation of the zombie franchise, as the sub-title suggests, this episode is more interested in Dr Kelson than it is in the zombies; apart from a frenetic scene on an abandoned train carriage, the only zombie DaCosta really cares about is the “alpha” at the centre of Dr Kelson’s sociological and medical studies.
The monsters in this film are not the zombies, but Sir Jimmy and his followers, with a thirst for the flesh and blood of humans every bit as great as their undead predecessors. But for them, rather than it being mindless compulsion, they wilfully murder innocents to win the favour of Sir Jimmy and – well, all I say is – his father. And what his followers are wondering is whether Dr Kelson is his father.
What drives Sir Jimmy and his gang fails to convince and there are too few other characters to ensure that the audience feels emotionally engaged and visually, most of the time, we’re just watching unpleasant people rampaging through woods and dilapidated barns. Spike is meant to be the human core of this element of the film, but given his lack of knowledge, power and experience, he doesn’t have the wherewithal to lead even his own storyline and largely has to go with the flow, with no real sense of what his longer-term goals might be.
Most of the highlights of the film involve spending time with Ralph Fiennes – not least the heavy-metal camp of his big showdown with Jack O’Connell and the time he spends in his underground bunker, where he still enjoys the trappings of the 1990s. But it does make you wonder how he’s managed to survive so long alone. Furthermore, you are left wondering why the few humans left on the mainland didn’t move to the safety of Holy Island and how they managed to survive for 28 years amid the onslaught of the zombies. And Sir Jimmy’s gang of largely under-28 year olds further begs the question of what happened to their families.
The almost unwatchable, unadulterated violence, at times, takes this film into the realms of body horror – hence the 18 certificate – but despite a paucity of zombies and the sickening behaviour of the Jimmies – if that’s the plural of Jimmy – Dr Kelson’s quiet determination and resilience ensure that the general narrative makes for a more entertaining experience than last year’s rather austere outing.
Anyone who’s stayed with Boyle, his writer Alex Garland and the rest of the team for this long will want to stick around for the as-yet-unscheduled, supposedly final instalment – of the “years” trilogy at least – but just to make sure, a cameo in the closing moments and the return of Boyle to the director’s chair are certain to keep fans of the franchise on the edge of their seats.