What’s interesting about 28 Years Later, the newest installment directed by Danny Boyle as a follow-up to his horror hit 28 Days Later, is that it breaks from the typical legacy sequel mold by requiring minimal backstory knowledge. This film does not feature any returning characters from its predecessor. The initial scenes set the stage by explaining how Britain was consumed by a rapidly spreading “rage” virus, leading to its isolation from Europe, and now, true to the title, 28 years have elapsed. This sets up the introduction of a completely fresh set of characters and situations. While viewing the original might enhance your experience, it’s not essential.

Nevertheless, isn’t the self-imposed movie watching part of the enjoyment? An appealing aspect of the 28 series is how accessible the entire storyline is. The first movie was released in the U.S. in 2003, and despite its past streaming absence, it can now be rented digitally. There’s also 28 Weeks Later, a less memorable 2007 sequel which is even easier to find. It’s available on Hulu (making it a part of the Disney+/Hulu package, so yes, zombies on Disney+), as well as Tubi, the platform of the people.

Why Watch 28 Weeks Later Tonight?

Before evaluating the film’s merit or its ties to the original and unofficial continuation, there’s the unique pleasure of revisiting an older movie that now features a cast that has since become all-star. In 2007, the cast of 28 Weeks Later stood out mainly because it didn’t include superstars like Cillian Murphy or Naomie Harris, leaving the future of their characters uncertain. It did feature Boyle’s favorite, Robert Carlyle (known for Begbie in Trainspotting), in a lead role, even though Boyle didn’t direct this time. In 2025, the film is full of recognizable actors. But more on that later.

The story begins with a harrowing sequence (apparently guest-directed by Boyle himself!) set during the initial “rage virus” outbreak where a husband (Carlyle) panics and leaves his wife to die at the hands of marauding zombies. (Their children, they’ve just revealed, are safely traveling in another country.) The movie initially follows Carlyle’s character reuniting with those kids, you guessed it, 28 months later, after the virus has seemingly been beaten back and England is re-opening after a long quarantine. There’s a grim, almost George Costanza-esque surprise waiting, however: The wife he guiltily thought he abandoned is actually alive, and able to tell their shocked and disgusted children the whole story.

It turns out, the wife has the rage virus, but is mysteriously immune, which explains why she is both alive, and able to (whoops!) keep that zombie virus spreading, baby! As we saw in the first film, the infection moves with terrifying speed, transforming its host within minutes. And that’s one of the weirdest things about 28 Weeks Later: It’s a sequel structured as if it’s picking up from status-quo ending of the previous movie, figuring out how to bring the virus back after it was defeated. But that’s not how 28 Days Later actually ends, so the movie expends a lot of energy explaining that now the virus is mostly gone, and then explaining how it came back, all of which leaves the movie… more or less in the same spot as if it had picked up the genuine status quo of the earlier film. It’s weird!

But it’s also compelling. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo takes a different stylistic approach than Boyle’s smeary digital video, shooting on celluloid for a decidedly different texture, and tells a different kind of story, intersecting the Seinfeld-ish familial mishap with U.S. military personnel who have come to help supervise England’s re-population efforts. (It may be sketchy, but it’s less sketchy than the repopulation plan attempted by army guys in the first movie.) That’s where the movie introduces Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, and Idris Elba, all before they were as famous as they are now; Imogen Poots is also on hand to play one of Carlyle’s kids, and Harold Perrineau (probably best-known, then and now, for Lost) appears as a pilot.

And as a ticking-clock action-horror movie with a name cast, 28 Months Later is quite good, with the benefit of not being quite as familiar as 28 Days Later. It’s scary and exciting, and most of where it falls short of the original is in an area that’s difficult to control: Boyle’s movie somehow feels nearly as current today as it did two decades ago, accidentally evoking all kinds of real-life horrors, from 9/11 to COVID-19 to social rage. 28 Weeks Later brings up some thorny interpersonal issues with Carlyle’s storyline, and has moments clearly reminiscent of then-current various U.S. occupations in the Middle East in its back half, but it doesn’t dig especially deep on any of it. It feels, to some degree, of its time rather than timeless.

That probably explains why it’s more of a footnote in the apparently developing series mythology; the new movie doesn’t decanonize anything from 28 Weeks Later, but it walks back the movie’s bleak ending to some degree. (Basically, it amounts to an undoing of an undoing of an undoing… something like that.) But then, that also allows this half-forgotten middle film to stand more on its own. It’s not required viewing to understand 28 Years Later; it’s curiosity viewing for fans of horror, zombies, and/or Jeremy Renner.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.