Warning: Major spoilers ahead for “28 Years Later.”
Fans waited nearly 20 years for “28 Years Later” — and its cliffhanger ending will likely leave them with more questions than answers.
The film is set three decades on from when the Rage Virus escaped from a lab in Britain, causing the infected to become mindless and bloodthirsty zombie-like killers.
It is essentially a coming of age story about a 12-year-old named Spike, who lives on an island that is cut off from the mainland during high tide, which protects his community from the infected.
The opening scene of “28 Years Later” shows the infected attacking a young boy named Jimmy at the start of the outbreak. It then jumps forward to Spike’s father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), taking him hunting on the mainland as a rite of passage.
They leave behind Spike’s mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), who is bed-bound by a mystery illness that causes amnesia.
Here’s the ending explained, and how it sets up the sequel “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.”
“28 Years Later” follows Spike as he tries to save his mother.
After Spike spots a fire in the distance while on the mainland, Jamie tells him of a man called Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), whom he saw nonchalantly burning hundreds of bodies when he was younger. He warns Spike of how dangerous even the uninfected can be.
However, Spike ignores him and decides to sneak Isla onto the mainland in the hopes the doctor can cure her. He creates a distraction by burning a general store and leaving during low tide.
On the mainland, Spike and Isla meet Eric (Edvin Ryding), a Swedish NATO soldier whose squad washed up in England after their boat sank. He saves them from a number of infected, but threatens to kill them when Isla helps a pregnant infected woman give birth to an uninfected baby. However, he’s stopped by a variant of the infected called an Alpha, who rips Eric’s head and spine off his body.
As they escape, Kelson suddenly appears and drugs the Alpha (Chi Lewis-Parry) with a blowdart, and provides Spike, Isla, and the baby with sanctuary in an area where he has built huge towers out of bones and skulls. He calls it the “Memento Mori,” Latin for “Remember you die.”
In one of the film’s quieter moments, he diagnoses Isla with cancer, which has spread to her brain. This explains her memory loss and extreme headaches. She chooses to let Kelson euthanize her and she tells Spike that she’ll always be with him.
She walks off into the darkness with Kelson, and he returns with her skull. In a heartbreaking moment, he lets Spike pick a spot in the Memento Mori to place it, and he climbs to the top of the tower, positioning her skull so that she’s forever looking out onto the world.
After Isla’s death, Spike embraces life on the mainland.
The next morning, Spike treks back to the island and leaves the baby outside the gate with a note explaining that she isn’t infected, and that he’s named her Isla. In a moment of rage and grief, Jamie races out to the sea at high tide to try to find Spike, but he has already disappeared.
Spike’s decision to leave the safety of the isolated island to explore the mainland alone appears to symbolize that he’s left his childhood behind.
But a group of infected soon find him while he’s cooking fish, and he flees his camping spot. In the film’s most surprising moment, he’s saved by a man in a bright purple tracksuit and gold jewelry who calls himself Jimmy (Jack O’Connell).
Most importantly, he’s the boy who survived the film’s savage opening. Jimmy is joined by several other young people with long blond hair and matching, colorful tracksuits who kill the infected with large spears.
Their appearance is a stark contrast to Spike and the other island survivors, who are haggard.
The group’s look is reminiscent of Jimmy Savile. The once hugely popular British television presenter who after his death in 2011 was revealed to be a prolific sexual abuser of children and adults. It’s possible that in the universe of the horror franchise, Savile’s crimes were never uncovered.
Jimmy asks Spike if he’d like to go with him, and the film ends there.
The scene sets the stage for the sequel, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” which arrives in theaters on January 16, 2026.
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