"28 Years Later" trailer: The eerie poem has a meaning

Viewers cannot ignore the poem in the freshly landed trailer of 28 Years Later and its perfectly spooky aura that it gives to the entire feel of the upcoming movie. Viewers are intensely curious about how the poem aligns with the movie’s theme. 

The upcoming movie would be the third sequel in the 28 Days Later franchise and one of the most anticipated movies of 2025. The trailer showed a glimpse of the world changing after three decades of a deadly virus outbreak.

Cillian Murphy is seen in the trailer as Jim. The trailer is intriguing enough to not give much detail about the movie, yet it lets the viewers want more of it. 

However, the cryptic poem, continuously playing at the back of the trailer’s visuals, is seemingly hinting at some of the possible elements of the movie. It keeps the viewers guessing. 

The eerie poem is called “Boots”

The trailer seemed perfectly aligned with the ghostly poem which could not have been better with any other sound effects or music sequence. The poem was authored by English poet Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1903.   

The poem was published in his collection called The Five Nations. The lines are meant to be repetitive thoughts of soldiers belonging to the British Army, generally used to train the trainees to survive in hostile situations.

The audio is the rendition of American actor Taylor Holmes, the same recording sound found in the trailer. The poem starts off in a serene manner but gradually builds up into something that runs shivers into the viewers’ bodies. 

It is known that the US Navy makes use of this audio for its trainees. It is played on a loop to prepare them for survival in the most unfavourable conditions. The US Navy’s program is called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE). 

Some Reddit users who have previously participated in SERE training recalled the poem that gives them “chills”. One of them wished he “hadn’t looked it up” on YouTube.

They mentioned that it wasn’t the poem that made them uncomfortable; it was the “voice of the person”. 

The selection of this particular poem as the audio of the trailer appears to be serving the purpose right. The poem, when watched with the movie’s clips, makes absolute sense since the marching sound of the footsteps of the survival group projects as they are fighting for their lives. 

The surviving soldiers feel a sense of despair to desperately escape the torture by the enemy forces, the endless suffering at the hands of the infected ones and call for resistance.

28 Years Later comes out on June 20, 2025.