10 Horror Sequels That Are Actually Worth Watching

After stepping away from the series for the first sequel, 28 Weeks Later, Danny Boyle returns to his zombie franchise in glorious fashion. 28 Years Later finds the UK in quarantine, cut off from the rest of the world to contain the Rage Virus. We follow Spike and Jamie (Alfie Williams and Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a father and son who have found safe haven amongst a small, rustic community on Lindisfarne, and who go to the mainland to hunt the infected and find supplies. But Spike’s rite of passage opens a new world of possibilities to him, and he returns to the mainland several times, first in search of help for his dying mother and then to find a different path for himself.

Boyle brings to this outing a whole new approach to cinematography, with lush vistas, bullet time kills and hallucinogenic sequences of colour and light, alongside an expanded world that looks beyond immediate dangers and the survival narrative to eccentric characters like Ralph Fiennes’ Dr Kelson, who covers himself in iodine to avoid the infected, and has built a forest of bones from the dead; and Jack O’Connell’s Sir Jimmy Crystal, leader of a Jimmy Saville inspired cult.

While it’s not a complete and self-contained story like its two predecessors, 28 Years Later nonetheless breathes new life into a presumed-dead franchise, and has the makings of a genre classic.