I Watched the 28 Years Later Trailer and Now I'm Obsessed With a 1915 Recording of a Rudyard Kipling Poem

NOW That's What I Call Movie Trailer!

I had planned a different topic for this week, but then the 28 Years Later trailer exploded into the world and gave me literal chills.

To be completely honest, 28 Years Later is not a film I have been hotly anticipating. 28 Days Later is one of my favorites of all time, and, through bitter experience, I have become leery of follow-ups to beloved classics. I’ve been trying to keep my expectations low, and regardless of how fantastic I think this trailer is, the film could still be a mess. But (in my best Chicago “da Bears” voice) dat’s a trailer!

My usual complaint that trailers reveal too much? Not this one, baby! If you knew this was a follow up to 28 Days Later, then I think you pretty much have the same amount of information post-trailer as you did pre-trailer. Okay, maybe now you know that Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character seems to be the focus. But the main idea - that the world is a horrible place full of danger from both infected (for simplicity, I’ll call them zombies from here on out) and regular people - if you’ve seen 28 Days Later, you knew that already. Heck, if you’ve seen any zombie movie at all, you knew that.

I’ve seen some speculation about where Jim, Cillian Murphy’s character from 28 Days Later, might be, but the trailer doesn’t explicitly answer that question either. All we’ve got is one shot of an emaciated zombie with devastatingly beautiful bone structure that some theorize is Cillian Murphy. If I had to weigh in (and I don’t, but I guess I will), I hope that’s not Jim. But also, this is the least interesting aspect of the trailer (and indeed any trailer) to me. A good trailer (in my opinion) is not about leaving little bread crumb easter eggs that sharp-eyed viewers can then break down over on their YouTube channels, while theorizing wildly about what will happen in the film. To me, this is a) just creating grist for the content mill, b) taking the joy and mystery out of watching a film for the first time.

As always, your mileage may vary, and if the theorizing is something you enjoy, don’t let me take that away from you! However, with so many theories flying around, someone will inevitably hit on the truth, and so by the time you actually watch the film, it may feel old hat. So there’s my two cents on that.

What the 28 Years Later trailer does so beautifully is externalize for the audience the internal headspace of the characters. Which is to say a descent into madness. As the poster tagline tells us: Time Didn’t Heal Anything.