Days turned to weeks in 2007, and on the 2025 movie schedule, weeks skip straight over to years - in the name of terror. Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s return with 28 Years Later has been a long time coming, and as a fan of the previous films, I’m loving what we’ve seen so far from the upcoming horror movie.
That notion was proven to be correct yet again, as not only has the Aaron Taylor-Johnson-starring picture dropped a new trailer, but Mr. Garland made a pretty huge admission about canon during a recent interview. Seeing as we’re all amped up like a Rage-plagued Infected, let’s tear into how the past looks to be affecting the future.
We Might Finally See The Origins Of 28 Days Later’s Infected Priest
From the moment we all locked eyes on 28 Years Later’s first trailer, one scene from 2002’s 28 Days Later has frequently cropped up in conversation. After seeing swarms of Infected flooding a random church in the teaser’s prologue, people started to wonder if Cillian Murphy’s first big encounter with this holy menace would be revisited.
If you don’t remember or are not familiar with that scene, that’s OK. Considering 28 Days Later was out of circulation for years, you may not have seen it, or it’s probably been a while. So enjoy this throwback to memory lane:
With the widely held belief that 28 Years Later is going to show moments from the initial Rage Virus outbreak as the picture’s opening, this assumption seems to have gained some steam. In fact, some seem to think that this could be a connection to Jack O’Connell’s mysterious character, Sir Jimmy Crystal.
Yes, that may very well be the Jimmy at the heart of my theory on Cillian Murphy’s 28 Years Later return; so perhaps Jim hasn't broken bad after all. Though I will admit, even if this isn't the priest from 28 Days Later, it looks like we'll at least see how that location was so wrecked by the time we saw it in that horror classic.
However, as I previously promised, there’s another piece to the puzzle that’s fallen into place. If you’ve been worrying about whether 28 Weeks Later was still canon or not, allow an expert to ease your troubled mind.
Writer Alex Garland Found An Explosive Solution To Handling The Ending Of 28 Weeks Later
Another interesting development came from an AMA that Alex Garland was on hand for, in order to promote his recent film, Warfare. Naturally, the question of how a Paris overrun with Infected at the end of director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s follow-up to 28 Days Later would fit with the vision of this potential trilogy has been weighing on some franchise enthusiasts.
Sure enough, the Civil War writer/director had an answer for that question, in this statement shared to Reddit:
It's allowed for. We made the assumption that Paris got nuked.
So much for those plans to visit the Eiffel Tower. The world of 28 Years Later is slowly coming into focus, and through these two segments, we could have something special on our hands. Although this could be only the beginning of a long and interesting game, which leads me to one final note to share.
28 Years Later Could Have A Viral Marketing Site Debuting Real Soon
When the teaser for this new 28 Years Later trailer was shared, another Morse Code message popped up. Take a look at that clip for yourself below, and make sure you know your dots from your dashes:
For those of us not born into the Navy, that message appears to spell the name of a website: RageLeaks-dot-net. The good folks at Reddit seemed to crack that code, and the site does seem to exist, albeit locked up with an Admin password that, at the time of this writing, no one’s figured out.
The popular guess is that if everything checks out, this could be an official viral marketing site that provides a lore dump for the events between 28 Weeks Later and 28 Years Later. So if you’re someone who wants to relive obsessively combing Cloverfield's viral marketing for backstory, that glorious day may be upon you.
And speaking of glorious days, 28 Years Later will be in theaters starting June 20th. Be thankful for everything, for soon there will be nothing.
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