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Review of 28 Years Later: A Masterclass in Pretentious Nonsense

Let me start by saying I had high hopes for this film. Maybe not expectations, but at least hopes - 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later were, in their own ways, gritty, gripping, and culturally resonant. So when I heard 28 Years Later was finally happening, I thought, "Right, let's see what they can do after all this time."

What I got was one of the worst cinematic experiences I've had in years. Possibly ever. I'm not even being dramatic. This was not just a bad sequel - it was a complete collapse of narrative logic, tone, and purpose.

I'm genuinely not sure what this film was trying to be. A dystopian horror? A surreal art-house fever dream? A medieval psychodrama? A hallucination caused by exposure to fungal spores? I'd accept any of those as valid guesses - because the film certainly doesn't bother to tell you.

The entire thing was utterly incoherent. Within the first 15 minutes, I was already glancing at the exit signs and wondering if anyone would notice if I just slipped out. The only reason I stayed was because I was with other people, and leaving would've sparked a whole awkward scene. If I'd been alone, I'd have been out of there before the popcorn settled. And I don't walk out of films lightly.

Let's talk about the director. Clearly thinks he's some misunderstood genius. The kind of person who sits in interviews calling his own work "visionary" and "challenging" while the audience is still busy trying to figure out what decade they're in. The entire film reeks of ego. Not confidence - ego. Delusion, even. As if somewhere along the line, someone told him he was a prophet of cinema and he never questioned it.

The problem is, when you're so obsessed with symbolism and "meaning" that you forget to actually tell a story, the result is what we got here: a meandering, self-indulgent mess with no anchor and no emotional weight.

The fantasy sequences - and I use "fantasy" because I don't know what else to call them - were completely divorced from the rest of the film. Medieval flashbacks? Rituals? Cloaked figures chanting about "the blood age" or whatever nonsense? What was that? No context. No setup. No payoff. It's like someone took random scenes from a different film, shuffled them in, and dared us to try to make sense of it. Spoiler: you won't.

Characters came and went without explanation. Dialogue tried desperately to sound profound but landed like a sixth-form philosophy essay written while high. Not a single performance felt believable, though I honestly don't blame the actors - I imagine even they didn't know what they were meant to be reacting to half the time.

By the halfway point I was actively annoyed, which turned to disbelief, then to boredom, then back to annoyance again.

There were attempts at emotional resonance, but how can you feel anything when the world the film presents is so poorly constructed, so void of internal logic, that you stop caring within minutes? I wasn't immersed - I was trapped.

I could go on. I could write 5000 words unpacking the technical failures, the incoherent editing, the baffling plot decisions (assuming there was a plot), the pseudo-intellectual voiceovers, the wasted potential of a great franchise name... but frankly, I've already wasted over two hours watching it, and another fifteen thinking about it is generous.

The bottom line: 28 Years Later is a film that thinks it's smarter than its audience. But trust me, it's not. It's just noise disguised as depth, incoherence dressed up as "art", and arrogance mistaken for vision.

Avoid it. Your time is worth more than this.

In my opinion, anyone giving this a bad review is taking it waaaay too seriously!

It doesn't take itself seriously, so why are you?

The acting is absolutely fine, even good, the story is nonsense, but it's meant to be.

It far surpasses pretty much everything else of this kind that Netflix has put out, it had me wanting to make time to watch the next episode which is very rare.

It has some cracking dialogue, that confirmed this was not meant to be taken seriously.

Netflix needs to make more things like this, that are fun, and don't try to carry a message or any such pretentious nonsense.

I hope they make another series, exactly the same.

Christophe Waltz was excellent, as always, but that is all this has going for it and the reason we watched until the end.

Nothing about it makes any sense, I'd guess that half of the screen time was not actually about the 'story', what little of it there was.

This was not deep or thought provoking, it was just bad, and a waste of 4hrs.

The fact this was made shows Amazon have far too much money to waste.

I am truly shocked that a few people are leaving this good reviews?

It's an objectively, nonsensical piece of television, that I'd challenge anyone to explain or justify.

I wish I'd come here and read some reviews first.

Avoid.