Summary
Now that Danny Boyle’s28 Years Laterhas been out for almost a week, fans just can’t stop talking about the horrifying yet emotionally intelligent apocalyptic movie. Filled with plenty of heartbreaking and thought-provoking scenes, the coming-of-age horror, written by Alex Garland, not only provides its audience with gut-wrenching visuals and a deeply meaningful narrative, but one character called Isla (played by Jodie Comer) goes through a truly harrowing journey, which sees her travel the mainland in search of answers with her son, Spike.
28 Years Latertells the tale of events that transpired after the Rage virus escaped a medical research laboratory, in which a group of survivors try to make a life for themselves among the terrifying zombies, with one group taking up life on an island in the hopes of maintaining a more “normal” life. However, while heading out on a hunting trip to the mainland, father and son, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams), are exposed to the horrors that lay in wait for them.28 Years Later’s YouTube trailergained 60.2 million global views in its first 24 hours and later becamethe best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025. As fans of the movie are slowly letting what they’ve seen sink in, Jodie Comer explains her poignant death scene and that touching train scene moment with an infected woman.
Jodie Comer Explains Isla’s Profound Death and “Primal” Train Scene
Speaking toEntertainment Weekly, Jodie Comer, who plays Isla in28 Years Later, broke down herheartbreaking death scene towards the end of the movie. Viewers only find out that Isla has been suffering from cancer for quite a long time after she and her son Spike finally find Doctor Kelson after traveling from their remote island to the mainland. Once Kelson tells Spike that his mother’s illness is terminal, Isla makes the heartbreaking decision to end her own life. Speaking about the death of her character, Comer said: “I felt like there was real agency in that choice.” She adds, “You see the journey that she goes on in the movie, let alone what she’s probably experienced for the past several years — the kind of inner turmoil and pain.”
“It is a very real thing that people come to a point of not wanting to experience that any longer. And I think they’re both comforted and held by Kelson in this space.”
Comer said that understanding that Isla’s son Spike was going to be “okay in this moment” with Kelson meant that Isla felt more at ease with wanting “to let go”, stating that “It’s probably hard for us to understand, but it was a complex moment.” Comer said that Isla “wanted to protect Spike”, likely due to how the world was already traumatic enough and that Spike’s father wouldn’t be much comfort to a young boy, and that’s the reason she “withheld a lot from him”. Delving into when Isla hears someone screaming anddiscovers an infected womangiving birth on a train, Comer reveals that the scene “feels like it’s just the beginning” of where the story will go.
“That moment provides such a sense of hope,” Comer expressed. “It was an interesting moment for Isla because we leave her in this moment of lucidity, and then she hears this scream. Danny and I imagined there was something very kind of primal within that that she connected with through her own experience, and that’s why she snaps to and goes directly to where the sound is coming from.” Comer also states that the beautiful moment of humanity with the infected woman was “very profound”, because “any wall or segregation of infected, non-infected, us and them, is completely stripped away… It’s a moment where we see Isla actually being a mother and taking control of the situation. I can’t wait to see where that story leads.”
Thankfully, fans won’t have to wait too much longer to see where the story goes as its upcoming sequel,28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,is slated to hit screens in January 2026.
