A rundown of horror movies of 2025: 28 Years Later

Apparently this blog mostly gets used for seasonal posting. This year Halloween I will present to you a rundown of the horror movies I’ve watched in the theater so far this year. It’s been a glorious horror year and more’s to come. Let’s review!

Starting with my least favorite.

28 Years Later

 

28 years after the outbreak of a rage virus that turns humans into mindlessly aggressive beings, the UK is quarantined off from the world (a fact that leads to some hilarious moments with a stranded Swedish soldier). 12-year-old Spike grows up in this environment on an island connected to the mainland by a causeway only accessible during low tide. When his mother grows ever sicker and the relationship with his father strained, he decides to brave the mainland and its unknown dangers in order to find help for her. What he does find is more than he could’ve imagined.


Spoilers from here on out


This movie was a major letdown for me. Possibly because the trailer was so fantastic and promised atmospheric and deeply unsettling horror. Both my friend and I were unsure if the movie wouldn’t be too scary for us and both of us sat in the theater afterwards asking ourselves “that’s it?”. There’s many things to be said about this movie, but for brevity’s sake, let me summarize my thoughts compliment-sandwich-style where I start with something I like about the movie before I mention something I dislike, and so on before I end on something I like.

• Maybe it’s cheating to mention the trailer, but I’ve come back to it since and I still really like it. Having a recording of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Boots play over eerie visuals was an inspired choice. Despite the disappointment of the movie the trailer hasn’t been ruined for me.
• The last couple of minutes, when a gang of tracksuit-wearing weirdos gleefully kill the infected in a stylized action-comedy routine, came so out of left field and fully took me out. The rest of the movie is mostly somber and serious and this is something else entirely. I’ve since learned that this movie is just the start of the trilogy and these people will become more relevant in future installments but that knowledge doesn’t make their appearance feel any less disjointed for this movie.
• Alfie Williams, the actor playing Spike does a great job with what he’s got. He’s fully believable on screen, keeps the movie as together as possible and holds his own against seasoned actors. Good on him.
• On at least three separate occasions we see the "alpha" infected pull a spine out of a body by the head. By the third time it happens, you are fully desensitized to it. The whole gruesome display would’ve had more impact if we’d just seen the result before we see it happen once. I know this is probably the least issue with the movie but it bothered me because it was such an unnecessary waste of horrific imagery. 
  
• The bone temple is such an exquisitely macabre set piece. That doesn’t change when we find out that it is made not with ill intent but love and care for the dead as a funeral monument. Instead it becomes eerily beautiful. I enjoyed the subversion of expectation here, that something that looks so ominous is actually positive.  
• The fact that there are "alpha" infected now, for whom the virus acts like steroids making them stronger and bigger (their dicks too!) and giving them power over birds??? Seemingly?? Sorry, that’s just stupid. Stuff like that fits in with comedic movies like Army of the Dead but you want us to take this one seriously, right? Right??
• Big fan of how the community Spike is from is more than a little cultish with their training the kids to become killers and revering of killing and adherence to specific rules. I like how it first seems calm and homely to Spike but once he’s been to the mainland and comes back, it starts to unravel. Wish they would’ve done more with that.
• I understand that there’s a plan behind this. I get that Danny Boyle, the director, and Alex Garland, the writer, didn’t just throw stuff at the wall in the hopes something would stick. And still it felt like that to me. There’s references to this and that, violence and isolationism and trauma and coming-of-age and religion and Jimmy Savile of all things. Some of it worked, and some of it didn’t but the bigger problem, in my opinion, is that the whole movie lacks cohesion and ends up being somewhat of a nothing burger with at times wonderful moments.
• Aaron Taylor-Johnson was there. I always like seeing him in movies.