That Creepy Poem In The 28 Years Later Trailer Has A Disturbing Real-Life History

The world got a rude awakening this morning by way of the brand new trailer for "28 Years Later," which somehow makes the Teletubbies even scarier than they already were. That's what you get when director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland reunite for a sequel to their pandemic movie nightmare "28 Days Later," which they created together over two decades ago. The pair are joined here by an incredible lineup of onscreen talent too, including Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Feinnes.

While the footage features plenty of folks on the run and trying to avoid getting nibbled or nicked by Rage infected locals (as you would expect), the most jarring thing about the "28 Years Later" trailer is the unsettling audio accompanying it. Rather than using the now iconic "28 Days Later" score by John Murphy to ramp up the stress levels, the promo features what instead sounds like a garbled poem — one that only serves to amplify the chaos and general sense that things have deteriorated dramatically on the British Isles where the last installment in the franchise, 2007's "28 Weeks Later," left things.

That voiceover is actually a recording of Taylor Holmes' 1915 reading of "Boots," a poem written by Rudyard Kipling of "The Jungle Book" fame (among other works, of course). What's more, Holmes' rendition is used in the U.S. Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school in a training exercise that requires them to listen to the recording over and over in a small room, so as to better prepare them for how to survive should they be captured and tortured by enemy forces. In his book "The Making of a Navy SEAL" (via Insider), retired Navy SEAL Brandon Webb describes this exercise as being "far and away the most intense training I'd encountered so far."

Debate the nature of the beast all you want, but like so many other similar post-apocalyptic franchises, war and the military have always had a presence in the "28 Days" property. The last time we went sprinting through this world in "28 Weeks Later," both Jeremy Renner and Idris Elba costarred as soldiers tasked with protecting everyday folk from those infected with the Rage virus. Likewise, in "28 Days Later," Christopher Eccleston's played Major Henry West, the twisted leader of a renegade platoon and, in many ways, the true villain of the story.

It's interesting, then, that the "28 Years Later" trailer uses a poem that holds such an important place in military history. According to Ralph Anthony Duran's "A Handbook to the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling," the first four words in each line of this poem "should be read slowly, at the rate of two words to a second. This will give the time at which a foot soldier normally marches." Of course, the "28 Years Later" trailer has no interest in being orderly, showing  Taylor-Johnson's character on the run from what might be a brand new menace (see the Ghostface-like mask at the 1:17 mark). Elsewhere, we see there's still a military presence armed to the teeth with headlights and rifles at the ready. Clearly, there's no discharge in the war of the "28 Days" universe.

"28 Years Later" arrives in theaters on June 20, 2025.