Latest news with #28WeeksLater
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
I'm still reeling after watching the horror film everyone's talking about
28 Years Later is a sequel to the popular 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later films, and has left viewers terrified, shocked and confused - all in equal measure. When 28 Days Later first hit the screens in 2002, I was just six years old - far too young to appreciate the intense, psychological pseudo-zombie horror filled with sprinting infected spewing blood and driven by the Rage Virus. However, as a teenager, I developed a fascination for the film and its less acclaimed sequel, 28 Weeks Later - which, in my view, boasts the best opening scene of any zombie film ever. So, you can imagine my thrill when I learnt that director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland were returning in 2025 with the third chapter of the franchise, 28 Years Later. This sequel deviates significantly from the previous films, and personally, I think this is a positive move. In the film, 28 years have elapsed since the Rage virus ravaged the UK. Mainland Britain has been quarantined, leaving those outside the island to grapple with the hordes of infected who range from the typical sprinting zombies made famous in the initial films to the swollen bloated infected who drag themselves across the forest floor surviving on worms. The introduction of these infected is utterly terrifying - the foley sound effect of these corpse-like creatures slurping down worms will echo in my mind for weeks. There's also another new type of infected - an Alpha. This monstrous zombie appears capable of critical thinking, making him a formidable foe for the main protagonists - father and son duo Jamie and Spike, portrayed by Aaron Taylor Johnson and Alfie Williams respectively, reports the Express. When Jamie guides Spike from their fortified village on Lindisfarne, across the tidal causeway to the mainland, Spike gets a rapid initiation into zombie hunting and scavenging. Echoing its predecessors, 28 Years Later is as much about family and society as it is about zombies. The plot thickens when Spike learns of a mysterious doctor on the mainland, portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, setting off an unparalleled hero's journey. In a desperate bid to find a cure for his mother Isla, brought to life by a brilliantly unhinged Jodie Comer, Spike leaves the safety of the village and his father's influence. He embarks on a perilous journey through the treacherous forest with his hallucinating mother, relentlessly chased by all three types of infected. The emotional bond between Spike and Isla was hidden in the film's promotional material, making its revelation a surprise that adds another layer of terror to the movie. Spike's commitment to finding a cure for his mother forms a central part of the storyline, ratcheting up the tension as the plot unfolds. In her lucid moments, Isla embodies the perfect mother - but she can also succumb to fits of rage and uncontrollable bleeding, eerily similar to the infected they are desperately trying to evade. The entire film is a thrilling ride, with the suspense barely easing off for a moment, culminating in the most unexpected and outlandish ending I've ever witnessed. Boyle and Gardener have already shot the next chapter of the series. 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple is slated for release in January next year, and I'll be there in the cinema on opening day. In conclusion, 28 Years Later is a brilliant extension of the franchise, and it's one of those films that has you insisting all your mates see it too, just so you can collectively ask 'what on earth was that?'.
Perth Now
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
James Norton 'grateful' for 'pain' of Imogen Poots split
James Norton is "crazily grateful" for the "pain" of his split from Imogen Poots. The 39-year-old actor got engaged to the 28 Weeks Later actress in 2022 after four years together, but they split in 2022 and the Little Women star now views Imogen's decision to end their relationship as a "gift". Speaking at the Glasonbury Festival, The Sun newspaper reports he said: 'It was a gift in a weird, roundabout way. 'She called it. She realised it wasn't working. 'I'm crazily grateful for the pain she caused me.' James - who is now believed to be dating Lily Allen - admitted the split was a "massive" moment in his life because he thought he and Imogen were going to raise a family together. He said: 'I got broken up with and it was massive. 'I thought I was going to have kids. 'The life I thought I was going to have disappeared at 38.' The Happy Valley actor previously insisted he hasn't given up hope of having a family, despite the end of his engagement. He told The Sunday Times newspaper: "Getting older is a struggle if you are freaking out about the choices you've made, but I don't carry regret. And, you know, some of the choices recently weren't mine, yet I don't feel begrudging. Maybe next year I'll have a family and a relationship ... "You have a certain amount of control over your life and choices you make, and at other times you don't. But if you made those choices or not, it's a shame to spend time agonising over either." And despite his desire to have children, James doesn't think it would have been "fair" for him to start a family in recent years. He said: "I don't sit on set where I'm playing a dad and feel sad and broody. I love hanging out with kids - most of my friends have kids so I'm not quite in step with my peers - but the past few years have been the busiest I've been, so it would not have been fair to bring a child into that. "Also, the inherently unfair benefit of being a man is there is less rush. I am lucky I can have kids later, so now I'm happy, actually, with my life. I feel really excited by the choices I've made."
CNET
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
'28 Weeks Later' Is in Netflix's Top 10 but Not in the US. Here's Where You Can Stream It
Every week, Netflix unveils its Top 10 lists for the week before, ranking TV shows and movies by viewership. It seems like the whole world had been preparing for the release of the zombie horror, 28 Years Later, by watching its predecessor, 28 Weeks Later, on Netflix. Actually, when I say "the whole world," I mean places that are not the US. That's because while 28 Weeks Later ranked No. 8 in Netflix's Top 10 films for the week of June 16, its thanks to viewers in 36 other countries. The film is not actually available to stream on the platform in the States. Don't worry, though. If you're itching to watch raging zombies terrorize a bunch of British people, you can catch 28 Weeks Later on Hulu and Disney Plus. (And after years of not being able to stream the 2002 film that started it all, 28 Days Later, you can now watch it free on Pluto TV.) 28 Weeks Later, which came out in 2007, is the follow-up to 28 Days Later. While Boyle, Murphy and the rest of the original cast didn't return for the film, Alex Garland was a producer. The sequel picks up six months after the events of the first movie, 28 Days Later. Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, it stars Cillian Murphy as Jim, a bike messenger who awakens from a coma to discover that London has been decimated by a rage virus that has wiped out much of the population and threatens the remaining survivors. Each film in the series depicts the aftermath of the viral outbreak that's turning people into homicidal rage monsters known as "the infected" (a.k.a. killer zombies). 28 Years Later has earned a lot of hype thanks to the reunion of its collaborators, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, and the fact that it's been in development for over a decade. While Boyle wasn't involved with 28 Weeks Later (Garland produced it but it was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who co-wrote the script with Rowan Joffé, Enrique López Lavigne and Jesus Olmo), the film has an impressive cast that includes Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne, Robert Carlyle and Idris Elba, all fighting for their lives as a new batch of zombies assails them in the English countryside. I'll let you debate which film is superior; it's a hot topic online and with the third film out now, everyone has their own rankings. If you haven't caught 28 Years Later in the theater yet, now you can make a whole week of it and catch the entire trilogy in order. You might as well, considering there's at least one more film in the series on its way -- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is slated for theatrical release next January.
Atlantic
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Baffling Beauty of 28 Years Later
In 28 Days Later, the walking dead don't lumber; they sprint. But when the film hit theaters in 2002, that was just one of many surprises for audiences used to the slow, mindless zombies originated by George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead series. The director Danny Boyle's postapocalyptic horror, written by his frequent collaborator Alex Garland, used low-resolution camcorders to capture the unsettling story of a man waking up to the end of society as he knew it. In the movie, humans have become victims of a 'rage virus' epidemic, turning into vicious, bloodthirsty creatures within seconds—and survival means fleeing or fighting back. 28 Days Later soon inspired a wave of similar, undead-related movies, many of which copied its moves. Asked how he and Garland had revived the zombie flick so effectively, Boyle had a simple answer. 'We took a genre,' he said in an interview in 2013, 'and fucked with it.' Boyle and Garland, returning after different filmmakers handled the sequel 28 Weeks Later, have only 'fucked with' the genre further in the long-anticipated follow-up, 28 Years Later. Even fans of the franchise should brace themselves: This time around, the zombies—called 'infected'—are more developed, the human characters odder, and the plot so dense that it's both more high-minded and exceedingly ludicrous. The film is another attempt to reinvent the zombie-movie-genre wheel wholesale, and the result is both audacious and bound to be divisive. Before the movie began, I worried whether Boyle and Garland would be able to top themselves more than two decades after 28 Days Later; by the time it ended, I was laughing at just how fantastical and wild their efforts were. Set somewhere off the coast of England, where the infected have been kept at bay by a heavily defended gate, 28 Years Later follows a 12-year-old boy named Spike (played by Alfie Williams). Spike has never known society before the rage virus left the United Kingdom quarantined from the rest of the world. He belongs to a tight-knit community of survivors, including his parents: His mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), is suffering from a mystery illness, and his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is eager for Spike to grow up and hunt the infected alongside him. The film opens with Jamie taking Spike to the mainland so that he can make his first kill—a rite of passage for the island's boys. There, Spike learns of Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a former doctor who has established a camp by himself in the middle of the woods. Although Jamie warns his son of Kelson's strangeness—he builds towers of skulls, for one thing—Spike believes that Kelson can cure whatever's ailing Isla. To further describe what ensues would be to risk spoiling the delight. Yes, delight: It's thrilling to watch a new entry in a horror franchise veer completely off the rails of its chosen genre. Spike starts his journey facing off against the kinds of infected not seen in the previous 28 movies; nearly three decades of mutations have yielded fresh, stomach-churning horrors. But his trek gets weirder, and more wondrous, as it goes along. In one scene, as Spike and Jamie flee the infected, the night sky appears to swallow them whole. Several characters Spike encounters seem to have wandered out of entirely different films. Much of 28 Years Later brings to mind details from other works—there's a shady character akin to one from Station Eleven; a bloated variant of infected recalls the monsters in the anime Attack on Titan; and the circumstances of Spike's island echo those of The Village —yet the movie feels singular. Like the bony sculptures Kelson has assembled, the film is abstract and unwieldy; at the same time, it's impossible to look away from. That's in part because Boyle has once again applied a captivating digital aesthetic. Shot mostly on iPhones using a horseshoe-shaped rig, 28 Years Later evokes a fever dream crossed with an immersive video game: Tilted angles and extreme close-ups dominate scenes, as do jarring cuts and freeze-frames that lead to spectacular kill shots. Again and again, blood splatters onto the camera lens, producing gleefully gory images. It's grimy, sometimes even ugly filmmaking, but it's effectively disorienting. What's most striking about 28 Years Later, though, is how it manages to hold together its freewheeling plot and tonal shifts. The film grounds its story in Spike's desire to save his mother at any cost—including, perhaps, his own sanity in a world hostile to innocence and tenderness. 28 Years Later punctuates the end of its first act, as it did in its excellent trailer, with a chilling 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Boots,' its verses about a soldier succumbing to lunacy soundtracking a montage of warfare. Spike's journey becomes unnerving because his reality is collapsing before his eyes. By the time Kelson and Spike meet, Fiennes appearing to be caked in burnt-orange makeup (Kelson has covered himself in iodine), I'd begun to wonder if I'd gone mad myself. I'm not sure if every one of the disparate beats and twists work in tandem; some images, such as that of the English flag in flames, are annoyingly on the nose. Isla is underwritten, even if Comer gives the character her all; lines such as 'the magic of the placenta' are laughable in their earnestness. But I haven't seen any comparable franchise go through a transformation such as this one. Boyle and Garland have taken a bold swing at material they created while maintaining the core appeal of the series. 28 Years Later grasps that its two predecessors have endured not only because of the intrigue conjured by fast-moving zombies and a found-footage look but also because they probe how isolation reshapes the human mind. Here, Spike is an avatar for the arrested development of an entire culture. He has no idea what the mainland looks like, what modern life entails, and what it feels like to be consumed by fear of something other than the infected—including the possibility that he can't stop his mother's suffering. The opening shot of 28 Years Later shows a group of humanoid creatures wandering a landscape; above it, instead of a sun, looms a smiling baby. It's a scene from Teletubbies, perhaps the most unnerving children's television show there ever was, and it's the perfect amuse-bouche for what the rest of the film brings. Although 28 Years Later doesn't star any toddlerlike aliens with touch-screen tummies, the movie is just as baffling, disturbing, and profoundly absorbing in its idiosyncracy. It ends on a cliffhanger, but I barely cared; the already filmed sequel set to be released in January will likely resolve it, and the final scene makes clear what Boyle and Garland have done: With 28 Days Later, they messed with a genre. With 28 Years Later, they're messing with us.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A Sequel In This Acclaimed Post-Apocalyptic Franchise Is The Top Movie On Hulu Right Now
'28 Weeks Later' is currently the most popular movie on Hulu, according to the platform's public ranking system. The 2007 post-apocalyptic horror film is a standalone sequel to '28 Days Later,' the acclaimed 2002 movie directed by Danny Boyle, which helped revive the zombie genre (although the movies don't technically feature zombies). '28 Weeks Later,' once again, focuses on the rage virus epidemic that plagued the population of Great Britain in the first film and its dangerous reintroduction. It stars Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Harold Perrineau, Rose Byrne, Robert Carlyle, Catherine McCormack, Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots. Renewed interest in the '28 Days Later' franchise was sparked by the recent release of the third film installment, '28 Years Later,' which hit theaters on June 20. The first film is now also available to stream on Pluto TV. Read on for more trending movies of the moment across streaming services, including Netflix, Max, Paramount+ and Peacock. And if you want to stay informed about all things streaming and entertainment, subscribe to the Culture Catchall newsletter. Netflix's latest animated original is one of the top movies currently trending on the streamer. 'KPop Demon Hunters' follows K-pop superstars Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo), who balance their lives in the spotlight with their secret identities as demon hunters, protecting their fans from supernatural danger. 'A Minecraft Movie' became one of the biggest movies of the year after raking in over half a billion dollars following its April 4 release. Now, it's the top film streaming on Max. Based on the 2011 video game, the family friendly flick — which stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa — follows a group of misfits who get pulled through a mysterious portal into a cubic wonderland. Twenty years after its television debut, the latest installment in the 'Noah's Arc' franchise is finally streaming on Paramount+. Picking up where the groundbreaking queer series left off years ago, the new movie follows the titular Noah and friends as they navigate middle-aged challenges like monogamy, parenthood and much more. Read HuffPost's interview with creator-director Patrik-Ian Polk here. Fifty years after Steven Spielberg's underwater classic swam into theaters, 'Jaws' is back on streaming and currently trending No. 1 on Peacock. The 1975 horror blockbuster about a massive killer shark sparked audiences' collective fascination with the ocean predators. It also left behind a complicated legacy. Read HuffPost's analysis here. If you're looking for other films to watch, check out our What We're Watching blog. How 'Jaws' Made Us Obsessed With Sharks — And Left Behind A Complicated Legacy This Black Gay Take On 'Sex and the City' Was Iconic — And It's Finally Getting Another Movie A Love Triangle Isn't The Real Story In 'Materialists'
