Pop Culture Happy Hour - 28 Years Later And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

The new apocalyptic horror film 28 Years Later takes place in the same world as 28 Days Later, where a deadly virus transformed the citizens of the U.K. into rabid blood-spewing creatures. The new film brings back the original's director and screenwriter, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. It's set on a small island where a group of survivors (including Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) eke out a modest existence. A desperate expedition reveals new allies and new horrors – because the infected have evolved.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The new apocalyptic horror film 28 years later takes place in the same world as the 2002 film 28 days later. In that movie, a deadly virus transformed the citizens of England into rabid blood-spewing creatures with really impressive lung capacity. Seriously, those zombies were just as good at wind sprints as they were at cross-country. The new film picks up almost three decades later on a small island connected to the mainland by a causeway where a group of survivors eke out a modest existence. A desperate expedition to the mainland reveals new allies and new horrors because the infected have evolved. The film stars Jody Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Rafe Fines. I am Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about 28 years later on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining me today is NPR producer Mark Rivers. Hey, Mark. Hey, Glenn, good to see you. Good to see you. Also with us is Jordan Cruciala. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Scene on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan? Hello, thank you so much for having me again. Of course. Who else but you? In 28 years later, we learned that the world has abandoned the UK and left it to the infected. On an island off the mainland, a group of survivalists managed to get by. There's Jamie, played by Aaron Taylor Johnson, who sets off with young son Spike on an expedition to the mainland. Spike is played by Alfie Williams. The expedition is a rite of passage in which Spike must kill his first infected. Meanwhile, back home, Jamie's wife and Spike's mother, Ila, is slowly dying of an illness that's beyond the humble medicine of their community, that's Jody Comer, ultimately Spike will decide that the cure for his mother's condition lies on the

mainland, which is now crawling with the familiar infected from the previous films, alongside a slew of new variants, including some that seem to possess intelligence. 28 years later is once again directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Scarland, as was the original film, 2002's 28 Days Later. It's in theaters now. Jordan, this sounds like you'll or wheelhouse? What'd you think? Big time in my wheelhouse and I don't normally succumb to expectation. I just want to like everything. And I'm like, hey, you know, it'll be what

it'll be. Sure. Let's be hopeful. But this first trailer that they put out for this was so incredibly good that I was like, this better be the movie of the year. Like, I'm actually going to be let down if this isn't so good that I'm blown away. And it turned

out the movie was actually a little bit different from I think where I thought it would be compared to that absolutely searing trailer. And yet still, I had an absolutely fantastic time. I cried at multiple instances. Oh, wow. I was stressed out for the entire duration, highly recommending 28 years later.

I think I was stressed out for the wrong reasons, Jordan. Say more. Well, I'm glad you weren't saying they're having a nothing experience and that you were at least stressed out. It was visceral. Yeah, Jordan, that trailer was also the trailer of the year. year for me. Oh my God. It might be the best trailer I've ever seen. A great trailer. I went from having no expectations for this movie to having very high expectations. And I gotta tell you, I did not

have fun with this movie. Yeah. What's the disconnect here? What's going on? Thinking about that first movie, 28 days later, I think you can make a difference between movies that don't want you to relax and movies where they themselves don't seem to be able to relax. And I think 28 years later is the latter. Looking back at that first movie from 2002, there was this careful balancing of calm and frenzy, you know, but both things were able to draw you in. And I think the movie was confident enough to kind of let the world, for the most part, speak for itself and draw you in with these sympathetic characters

and also this kind of great world building. And the movie kind of let you come to it. And I think what 28 years later, it felt like the movie was throwing itself at you, using different devices, both visually and on the soundtrack, because it to say, notice me, notice me, these weird whip pans and freeze frames, infrared scenes. There's a use of an incredibly haunting poem by Rudyard Kipling in the trailer. They use it in the movie as well.

But I'm thinking to myself, why are they using it? What message is it trying to deliver with this poem that was also kind of made part of the British Imperial Project? I think just the many devices, it just took me out. Also, just at the start, I have a barrier of entry for Aaron Taylor Johnson movies. This guy is so polarizing, and that blows me away. I love him. I cannot stand him, Jordan. All right.

I just do not buy him. I always catch him acting. This movie, it's many devices, and it just, it took me out of it. I could never, I never felt like I was settling into what it was doing or trying to say. It was always pushing me out. I'm going to split the difference, as I often do. I think this is clearly a return to the more, I don't want to say autore, the more indie, idiosyncratic vibe of the first film. There are elements of this film, moment.

of this film, which are downright lyrical, which I did not expect. This film is explicitly cinematic, which sounds like a stupid thing to say about a movie, but I mean that it is referential, right? There are visual callbacks to films like Night of the Hunter again and again. And we actually see, as you mentioned, scenes from British medieval war films and what seems to be newsreel footage, I mostly dug it. It does feel, because of elements like that and because the act breaks are so clearly distinct from one another, this film felt a little disjointed structurally.

Yeah. While I really kind of liked it as a film, I found it not to be particularly effective as horror because the thing, arguably the most important thing about a horror film for it to accomplish its goal as a horror film is for us to never be unaware of the threat level, right? To always know what threat is facing our characters in a given moment, that threat level felt like it was pretty arbitrary and was sliding around from scene to scene moment to moment. I just want to get your reaction to that. Yeah, I think, or thinking back to that first movie is kind of balancing of common frenzy. The frenziness or kind of or kind of the reaction sequences in this movie felt kind of unmotivated. Like one minute, it would just happen the next minute, nothing's happening. And I think those interstitial kind of moments that you're talking about also kind of rinse me out of the kind of momentum they were kind of building.

You never knew when something was going to pop off. You never knew when the infected would show up. That didn't feel like a kind of suspenseful device. It felt like the screenwriters almost didn't have. have a control of the story in a way. You know, it felt a little haphazard, almost, almost scatterbrained even. For me, I hear everything factually that you are saying, Mark, like with the technical aspects, because it kind of front loads you with those technical aspects, I feel like in terms of like the tricks of the camera too. Like, it's sort of like coming at you a little hard. I love that

characterization of the movie is like throwing it selfie. I completely agree. This movie threw itself at me. It was a punch in the face. It was erratic and destabilizing in a way that I did feel by the end, the cohesive picture of it did work for me. And where I was kind of like, oh, am I going to want that like to take angle on an execution of an infected every time that it happens in this movie? No, I don't. And it didn't do that every time. So it was like, okay, we're going to show off a little bit up front. We're going to establish a new visual signature with this movie compared to the other two. But oh, man, the highs of this movie were as high for me as what was achieved in the best moments of the first.

one, which really re-established the zombie format as something that we wanted to keep making and see again. And of course, the sprinting zombie. That whole alpha rundown of Aaron Taylor Johnson and Alfie Williams, the main father and son in this movie, where they are like on the approach back to the Ford and this thing is coming after them. I thought I was going to shoot out of my chair like a rocket. Like I was so dialed up. And there was something too about like what you said about like the very punctuated moments of sort of violence and attack compared to like these kind of troughs of calm where it's like wait is the world normal again that really worked for me as a kind of I found it to be a kind of rhythmic balance and it also allowed for like

this movie definitely made me emotional in the way that the previous two didn't quite get me in this exact way or I was like weeping at pathos in my chair and I will say Aaron Taylor Johnson fantastic one of the best guys you don't want to root for rarely have I say in a movie where there was such quick, carmic turnaround for a guy who's like a crappy dad and husband. And then he like has to take the punishment for his actions. As his son goes off on a sojourno, we'll not get in any further detail on that.

But yeah, I wouldn't even be like, oh, no, you're wrong, Mark. These things weren't happening. I'd be like, no, you're totally right. But it actually just happened to sync up with my frequency, I think. Jordan, that chaser mentioning I was rooting for the outfit. I want him to chase them both down and take them out. I think that's part of the really great thing about this movie.

is it kind of felt like at any given time the zombies were going to win. I was like, dude, halfway through this movie, this could just be a bloodbath and everybody we care about could already be gone. The stakes felt so legitimately high. I thought the alpha might get one or both of them in that chase down, and I was ready to be like,

how am I going to cope with this for the rest of the movie? All right. Well, you both mentioned this father-stun dynamic. Let's talk about that. Because the thing about this movie is, it goes away. I liked that dynamic. You know, I have reservations about Aaron Taylor Johnson, too.

But, man, I don't have any reservations about Alfie Williams, that kid, so good in this. But I got a zag again. Okay, ma'am. I thought his performance, I was not fully convinced. All right, well, I'm going to disagree with you there. I mean, I think this kid, Alphabet Williams, is pretty great. I mean, he's very expressive and, you know, so much of this film is riding on his back.

I disagree. The son in this film realizes that his father starts playing fast and loose with the truth, and he's doing that for a good reason because he loves his son. He's trying to heap glory on his son. But that makes the son wonder what else he's not being. truthful about, that is rich, that is chewy. As soon as we lose that dynamic, the film really thins out for me. I'm a huge fan of Jody Comer.

She was more of this movie than I expected her to be. And the nature of her character was really different that I had even minorly anticipated. And so the chance to see her really kind of like dig deep and do something like upsetting and like, oh God. Like there's, I don't want to use too many descriptors that would like lead people down a path. But like the role that he assumes of caretaker of her and the way that she perceives him and the way that her mind is sort of fracturing in this panicked post-apocalyptic landscape, I really liked the two of them together. For me, the father hung over it still of like, I was thinking about him the entire time and being like, ha, ha, ha, ha, guess we shouldn't have been such a POS previously and then you wouldn't be in this situation, would you? The first part of it, where does the father and son together? like that was super rich.

And I was enjoying what was giving me on screen, but I felt like the transition into the him and mom thing with the very comic relief soldier that they happen upon was a satisfying jump for me. I do want to give a shout out to Edvin Riding, who plays a Swedish soldier,

who we meet briefly, much-needed moments of humor. That guy is the ultimate voice of reason. He is radical practicality. He is the only one who's making any damn sense in that railroad car. But I do also want to get to this ending,

and we're going to do this advisedly. But the thing that can, tributes to the disjointed quality of this film. And the reason it ended up not feeling satisfying to me is because this film does not work unless you think of it as the beginning of a trilogy. Now, a trilogy is planned. It's not necessarily going to happen. We'll wait and see. They have filmed two movies back to back. The next one currently has a January 2026 release date. So just in a few months. They're going to wait and see how this first film does to see if they actually end the trilogy. They're calling the final sequence of this film an epilogue.

It felt like a cliffhanger before the next episode in a series, almost. Exactly. It cuts off in the middle of a chapter. Like, it's not the end of a chapter and then the beginning. It cuts off in the middle of the chapter. And that isn't satisfying. Do you agree? Yeah, it felt like I think this is a problem that's playing a lot of movies lately.

You can maybe call it the kind of marvelization of movie making, where I think we're having more trouble or filmmakers are having more trouble making movies that can just stand up on their own. I think about some of the things in this movie is trying to set up a sort of tribalism that happens. in extreme circumstances. The opening scene kind of hints that a religious fanaticism that might come up under extreme circumstances. What kind of community functions

under extreme circumstances? How does one change their sense of being or change their belief system? And it's kind of gesturing all these things. But for me, they felt like gestures.

They felt like seas being planted for another installment for Trozy. It didn't feel like you could just stand up on its own. If I brought someone into this movie who had not seen

any of the other films, I feel like they would be lost. My jaw collapsed down to the ground. Oh, my two. Wildly entertained. I think I had surrendered myself to those like experimental sort of tricks at the beginning of the movie and sort of dotted throughout to where I had given myself over to this movie taking me on journeys that I was like, okay, I'm going to follow it on this. And then we journey once again at the end. And that for me, I had again surrendered by that point.

and what it was giving me in isolation was so much further my thing that I was super hyped for what was happening. For me, it works as a standalone. I can only say that because I've seen other, having known that I've seen the other two, so like would it really stand alone for me? I couldn't say that, I guess, in a vacuum. I appreciate more a planned trilogy than a reactive trilogy because, okay, fine, if we're going to do this thing at the end, you're telling me that you're doing it with the intention of planting this for a complete, thing you already have finished and you have a third vision in mind. So you have selectively

drilled down on little bits because you want to blow out the world wider over the course of a three film project. That worked for me. But I again, this is, again, it's one of those things where I could hardly argue to somebody why they would be incorrect and misassessed the feel of this film, especially when we're so steeped in that as a practice in the industry today, there is certainly a more threadbare ask that you're making of people to be like, go with me on this and trust this like extension, IP extension. We're marinating of that law right now and not in necessarily the most fun, desirable way. I think it's worth parsing out the kind of world movie, TV, pop culture, world that 28

years later is coming out in comparison to 28 days later. When 28 days later came out, zombie IP, if you will, zombie content was pretty dormant. Yeah, it was tired. Yeah, it was tired and it kind of revolutionized that kind of, material through the speedy, feral zombies and really kickstarted this kind of Renaissance we've had. And 28 years later is coming out in this, you know, post-Zack Snyder, post-walking Dead, post-last of us world.

And I think there's a pressure on folks like Denny Boyle and Alex Garland as far as what new can I bring to this material. And I think the answer is the sort of busyness that we get up from this movie where it's like, We're going to throw a lot of ideas at you. Throw it through different kind of mediums and in different ways. We're going to use iPhones to shoot this, just kind of like in the lineage of 208 days later when the first one was kind of shot on like Grimy Digital video. They're kind of upping the technological ante here. They're trying to give you a lot.

I do not regret the pressure that it takes to kind of make a movie like this in a world of Walking Dead in The Last of Us. But I think that busyness, I think it gets away from them. I would not be surprised if a number of people are not willing to go on this adventure with them just because of the way. it ends and the way that feels just so kind of out of left field almost. It's a big choice. It is a choice. I feel some may not be willing to follow this choice or agree with this choice. Yeah, although, Mark, you know, as we're talking about, I think I'm kind of coming around to this film more.

Oh, no. I'm alone, no. Oh, no. Oh, yes. I'm all alone. As you point out, it does feel distinct from Walking Dead and The Last of Us in a way that, for example, 28 weeks later did not. 28 weeks later felt like the Hollywood Eyes secret. with a lot more ordinance and the Jeremy Runner of it all.

This feels more, as I said, more idiosyncratic, more distinctive. And I think we should give it points for that. Well, I think we place ourselves at different parts along the spectrum of like to dislike. And I have inched a little bit closer to Team Jordan over the course of this conversation. That's okay. I'll be the hater. But that's me, right? That's me.

Tell us what you think about 28 years later. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash pc-c-h and on letterbox. at letterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week? Now it is time for our favorite segment of this weekend every week. What is making us happy this week? Jordan, what is making you happy this week?

What is making me happy this week is a throwback that I did not expect to get into, but my wife is now watching as I did so, the L word original incarnation. Original recipe from Showtime. If you've watched this show, I think you have forgotten just how much it covers in the first season. We've got a coming out story. We have got drug use. We have a lesbian-identified man.

This show always did the most. I can't stress enough what an incredible time capsule this is to go back to the 2000s with the first, most body, most explicit, most lesbian program on television that Showtime had a hit with Queersfolk and they were like, the ladies need theirs too. Obviously, the American version of Queersfolk coming off the British version of Queers Folk. It is so cheesy. It is so ham-fisted and over the top and it is an absolute delight. Moa is hooked. We've just passed Dinah Shore weekend. Yeah, dig back into Elward. If you have done so, check it out if you haven't. Do not. Let let Gen Q be your impression of the L Word.

Respect your elders. Your queer elders. Happy Pride. The L Word original recipe. All right. Tell me where to find it. This is a Showtime program. So this is all Paramount Plus offering is where you can find this one.

Thank you very much. That's the L Word original recipe on Paramount Plus. Mark, what is making you happy this week? So it's making me happy this week is the Criterion Channel, specifically a series that they've curated up on the Vietnam War. And this year is marking 50 years since the fall of Saigon. I feel like still America have trouble talking about this war and telling the truth about the way we wades this war. And what I love about this series is that you will find films like platoon or full metal jacket. But you also have movies from a number of Vietnamese filmmakers.

And one of them that I watched that really blew me away was 1974 as the Little Girl of Hanoi. And the film acts as this kind of document of war-torn Hanoi. You know, you can see the bombed-out buildings and streets. And you expect a much meaner movie than what you get. But it's this really tender, poetic movie from the perspective of a child as he's kind of traversing war-torn annoy, looking for her father. And it just speaks to all the perspectives that we have yet to get about this conflict, all the perspectives that have been underseen. It really blew my mind. You could see watch this movie that the production was probably held together by duct tape.

But the ultimate result is revelatory. And for those who are looking for Vietnam War movies that are not Rambo, or Aver Stone films. And if you do have the Criterion Channel, I would strongly recommend The Little Girl Up in Noi and a number of other films on there are worth a look as well.

All right, thank you very much. Mark, what is making me happy this week the latest season of Top Chef recently wrapped up with a finale taking place in Milan? In a season that was really overstuffed with sweaty gimmicks, the finale was refreshingly simple and clean.

They got plenty of time to cook and prep. They got help from the chefs that they wanted to get help from. They got a chance to show who they are, which is ostensibly the point of that show, which I think the season sometimes forgot. The most gimmicky aspect of the finale turned out to work in a really surprising way from me

because the three finalists got a private viewing of Da Vinci's The Last Supper. And when I realized that's what was going on, I tensed up because that is such an obvious, corny, cheesy reality TV producer gimmick, the finale of Top Chef, the Last Supper, right? But then Tristan Epps, who is one of the contestants,

who spent the entire season, showing how his cuisine, which is Afro-Caribbean cuisine, has a place at a fine dining table and have talked a lot about the way the culinary world, which, of course, is grounded in European culture, looks down on food of the African diaspora. He notices something about the painting, the Last Supper. He notices that the only person depicted with dark skin is Judas. So that was a very cool way of just connecting the dots with centuries of prejudice that manifests in a bunch of different ways and how they continue to manifest in some something as rarefied as the world of fine dining.

I am not going to spoil who wins, but I will just say the right person wins, and it is hugely satisfying. That is the finale of season 22 of Top Chef on Peacock. And that is what's making me happy this week. And if you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter

that brings us to the end of our show. Mark Rivers, Jordan Cushula. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. And I'm glad I won today. This episode was produced by Havsa Fataba and Mike Katz, if you're not wrong. And edited by our showrunner, Jessica Riddy, and Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.