Zombie Cinema Isn't Dead, but Cinema Etiquette Might Be

There’s something deeply ironic about watching a movie like 28 Years Later — a movie about the decayed remnants of civil society and the long-term effects of post-apocalyptic upbringing — surrounded by people who behave like they were raised in a bunker by an iPad and a sack of Hi-chew.

And look, I’m not some purist who thinks movie theaters need to be as silent as a confessional — I love a rowdy audience when it’s earned. The right crowd can turn a good movie into a spiritual experience. I’m talking cheers of elation at Cap catching Mjolnir in Avengers: Endgame, covered eyes and groans of disgust at the knife scene in Bring Her Back, awestruck “Ooh"s and “Wow”s at the training sequence in Top Gun: Maverick. Atmosphere is everything. It’s what separates cinema from content. It’s a shared, physical engagement with story — with other people.

But when I sat down to watch 28 Years Later, a film explicitly about the fraying fabric of social cohesion and the fragile rituals that keep us human, I was greeted by what I can only describe as the bastard children of World War Z and TikTok. One guy spent the entire pre-show playing a shark fishing game on his phone. And not subtly — screen full-blast, brightness maxed, like he was trying to signal passing planes. I asked him politely to turn off the game. He ignored me and tried to tilt the phone away while continuing to play as if he thought I wouldn't notice. I called him out on it and in a more demanding tone said: “How about we turn it off, actually?” He did. But I could feel the pout radiating off him like 5G heat.

Two other people kept rocking in their seats like toddlers on sugar comedowns, slamming into my and my roommate's knees every five minutes like they were testing us for shin splints. A Gen-X meathead a few rows up typed a full-ass essay over text with his bratwurst fingers during the cold open and refused to put his phone away when my roommate asked. Apple watches kept lighting up like distress beacons every time someone reached for a handful of popcorn. Some latecomer strolled in ten minutes deep, lit by the blue flame of their touchscreen as they took their sweet-ass time sauntering across the front of the auditorium, and THEN, after stumbling his way through his row, asked his friend for a recap — out loud, of course. There were several Sally-Soundtracks in the back, a herd of boomers doing musical chairs at the front, and one guy who left to refill his popcorn only to trip while walking back up the stairs and spill it all over the floor. Like, buddy, I’m begging you. Just let the maize grains lie.

By the time the lights dimmed and that cold open started — a Teletubby-scored nightmare of childhood trauma and theological despair — I was already emotionally raw. And somehow, that worked in the film’s favor. Because 28 Years Later illustrates what happens when nobody corrects bad behavior. When rituals vanish. When memory erodes and people forget how to care for each other — or why they even should. It’s a movie where medicine has been lost to time. Where a child is raised in a quarantine zone with no doctors, no infrastructure, no blueprint for civilization except what his parents and community can vaguely piece together. So yeah — maybe this crowd was thematically appropriate. Maybe we were all Spike in that moment, surrounded by ignorance and decay, just trying to hold on to something that feels sacred.

And 28 Years Later is sacred. No exaggeration — it might be the best zombie film of the last two decades. It’s a legacy sequel that dares to challenge the legacy itself. It’s sitting comfortably in the conversation next to Blade Runner 2049, Mad Max: Fury Road, Suspiria (2018), and Top Gun: Maverick.

Directed by Danny Boyle (back in full control, and fully unhinged) and written by Alex Garland (off his war-horse and back to haunting us with quiet doom), the film picks up twenty-eight years after Weeks — long after Europe has cleansed itself of the Rage Virus, but the British Isles remain sealed off. On Lindisfarne, a real-life tidal island off the Northumberland coast, a makeshift community survives behind fortifications, barely tethered to the mainland by a causeway only accessible at low tide and completely cut off from the modern world. That’s where we meet Spike (Alfie Williams), the son of Jaime (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer) — a 12-year-old boy whose coming-of-age begins with a father-son hunting trip and ends with a series of choices no child should ever have to make.

Spike isn’t your typical plucky apocalypse kid. He’s no Ellie from The Last of Us, no train-surfing rebel from Snowpiercer, and no Little Rock from Zombieland. He’s awkward, unsure, and often just plain scared. He doesn’t kill with ease. He doesn’t fire off clever one-liners or show-up the adults. He pukes after his first real trauma. He cries a lot. And yet — he learns. He watches. He adapts. And eventually, he decides who he wants to be, regardless of what the adults around him do.

This is what sets 28 Years Later apart from its genre peers. The film isn’t about surviving the apocalypse — it’s about surviving childhood within the apocalypse. And not in a cutesy “kids are resilient” way. It’s about witnessing moral failure — a father cheating, lying, abandoning — and having to decide whether you’ll become that man, or something else. Whether you’ll perpetuate the sins of the people who raised you, or build something new from their bones.

Bones… so many bones….

Let’s talk craft. Because this movie is gorgeous. Gritty, yes — it still feels raw and feral like the original 28 Days Later — but it’s also achingly beautiful. Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography (mostly shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max — I know, I rolled my eyes too) is jaw-dropping. Not because of the camera, but because of how the camera is used. Light is everything. There’s one shot — infected silhouetted against a field of yellow tulips at dawn — that made me gasp in its juxtaposition of beauty and horror. Another where Spike ascends a spiraling tower of skulls, placing a new one at the top like a crown of grief. It’s brutal. It’s poetic. It’s transcendent. It's a sure Oscars snub come February. And don't even get me started on those bullet-time shots.

The film weaponizes its digital aesthetic. Glitches, blown highlights, digital noise — all used intentionally, especially during high-tension sequences. The editing is jagged and rhythmic, echoing the frantic heartbeat of survival. The score by Young Fathers is a revelation — pulsing, mournful, industrial yet tribal, and alive. And the sound design? Jesus. Y'all are not prepared for the levels of goopy sloshing, squealing, and crunching in this movie. The Alphas (a mutated strain of infected where the virus boosts the body of the infected like steroids) move with a kind of feral intelligence. They snarl like wolves, wail like banshees, and sprint like Olympians dosed with bath salts and bad memories.

Speaking of — the zombies (sorry, "infected") are horrifying. Naked, emaciated, and feral, their bodies long since stripped of clothing and modesty, moving like sinew-wrapped ghosts. The Alphas are a terrifying escalation: towering, musclebound, coordinated. The hive-mind behavior works surprisingly well — it’s not cheesy, it’s mythic. One Alpha, credited only as “Samson,” feels like a biblical plague given flesh. And yes, one scene involving childbirth will likely live rent-free in your brain for the rest of your life — whether you want it there or not.

But again, this isn’t just gore for gore’s sake. The horror is a vessel. And inside that vessel is a deeply human story — not about how we survive, but why. Every emotional beat in the final act lands like a blowdart to the heart. There’s a devastating revelation. A quiet farewell that hits like a sledgehammer. A symbolic act of care that reverberates through an entire community, even if its true meaning goes unspoken. These things matter more than spectacle. They linger. They hurt. They remind us that survival is never just physical — it’s emotional. It’s spiritual. It’s ritual.

The doctor — played with eerie tenderness by Ralph Fiennes — offers no cure, only truth. When Spike climbs that temple of the dead to lay a skull to rest, it’s not just a metaphor. It’s a fucking rite of passage. It’s pain made physical. Loss made ritual. It’s his bar mitzvah, his war cry, and his coronation all in one.

I won’t spoil the entire ending — though the final few minutes take a jarring turn into more surreal territory, hinting at stranger roads ahead. But trust me: this film earns its tears. It earns its dread. It earns every second of that grimy, beautiful runtime. It’s not always elegant — there’s some clunky exposition in the first act, and a final tonal shift that might split the room — but it’s one of the boldest, most affecting pieces of genre cinema in years.

So yeah — 28 Years Later fucked me up. And not just because of the fidgety, phone-lit chaos gremlins surrounding me. If anything, they enhanced it. Because it made me realize: civilization isn’t some fixed state. It’s a performance. It’s learned. You aren’t born knowing to silence your phone in a movie theater. Someone teaches you. Someone taps your shoulder. Someone hands you their skull and says, place this somewhere sacred.

Spike had to learn that in the forest. In the fire. In the blood. Maybe the rest of us need to learn it in the cinema.

So please — beg if you have to, threaten if you must — but say something the next time someone checks their DMs while a mother comforts her son in the middle of a fucking zombie movie. Because if the infected ever do come, I promise you: fishing-game guy dies first.