The best Danny Boyle movies: Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and more!

When 28 Years Later hits cinemas on June 20th, 2025, it’ll have been the best part of 23 years on from the release of the original.

It will also mark director Danny Boyle’s 14th movie across a stellar 31 year career. Check out its latest trailer below:

Ever since Shallow Grave knocked our collective socks off in 1994 (and introduced us to a young Ewan McGregor), Manchester’s favourite movie directing son has trodden a remarkably eclectic path.

Boyle doesn’t seem interested in sticking to a single genre or way of shooting. He’s made crime thrillers, comedy capers, thoughtful sci-fi flicks, gruesome horror movies, hard-hitting dramas, insightful biopics, and even the odd crowd pleasing rom-com.

The only thing that’s consistent across all of these different films, beyond the identity of the director, is an impressive sense of momentum. Danny Boyle’s films are never less than supremely watchable.

But which of Boyle’s films is the best? Let’s dive into this baker’s dozen of brilliant movies and see if we can’t figure it out together, from our least favourite to the very best Danny Boyle movie so far...

13. Yesterday

Danny Boyle likes to mix and match his genres, and Yesterday sees him combining his love of music and warped perception with the tropes of a fluffy romcom. What’s surprising is the extent to which he leans into the latter element, with none other than Richard ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ Curtis providing the screenplay. Himesh Patel plays a struggling musician who awakens from an accident to a world where The Beatles never existed. Cue an extraordinary rise to fame as he rolls out the hits, pausing only to fall for his childhood friend Ellie (Lily James).

12. T2 Trainspotting

T2 was never going to be able to replicate the searing live-wire energy of the original Trainspotting, but then that’s kind of the point. It’s 20 years on, and our gang of reformed (and not so reformed) junkies are now contending with the trials and tribulations of middle age. An early health scare and a crumbling marriage prompts Ewan McGregor’s Mark Renton to revisit his old Edinburgh stomping ground. Along the way old friends are encountered, old habits reacquired, and old debts called in, as Boyle hits all the right nostalgic notes.

11. Trance

Trance feels like Danny Boyle’s suitably twisted take on the slick psychological thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s. When bent auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy) is struck on the head during an art heist, his ensuing state of amnesia causes complications for all involved – especially when hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) is hired to help jog his memory. Featuring the kind of twists and turns that will prompt either incredulous blinks or unintended laughter, it isn’t exactly Boyle’s finest work, but it’s stylishly executed nonetheless.

10. Millions

And the winner of the Danny Boyle movie you’ve probably never heard of goes to… Slipped quietly in between 28 Days Later and Sunshine, Millions was a chance for Boyle to show his bright and breezy side in amongst all that genre movie intensity. It also serves as a sunny B-side to the director’s grisly debut, with its tale of ordinary Brits discovering a bagful of money. Unlike Shallow Grave, though, these are likeable people (children in fact) who decide to put the money to a more positive end.

9. The Beach

Boyle’s early experience with the Hollywood machine produced two curious misfires, but both have their charms. In the case of The Beach, those charms include Boyle’s first collaboration with Alex Garland (who wrote the beloved novel that the film is based on) and a certain Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. Shout out to the movie adaptation’s stunning cinematography, too, as DiCaprio’s disaffected American backpacker stumbles across an idyllic Thai island commune. Elsewhere, the glossy soundtrack perfectly represents the Y2K vibe.

8. A Life Less Ordinary

Danny Boyle seems to struggle with overtly American movies – Steve Jobs being the notable exception – but even these relative ‘duds’ have their merits. In the case of A Life Less Ordinary, it’s genuinely bracing to see early era Boyle’s fizzy Britpop energy transplanted to the other side of the Atlantic. Ewan McGregor plays an out-of-his-depth kidnapper who reluctantly teams up with Cameron Diaz’s spoiled brat on a poorly conceived extortion scheme. A Life Less Ordinary is all over the place, but good fun nonetheless, and has another killer soundtrack.

7. 127 Hours

James Franco may not be the flavour of the month any longer due to various indiscretions, but he’s undeniably excellent in this true to life thriller about mountaineer Aron Ralston. When Franco’s Ralston gets trapped in a precarious ravine during a solo hike, he’s forced to make the kind of life-altering decision that would seem unthinkable to those of us who get their kicks from warm pubs and streaming services. Boyle’s mastery of his art is on full display as the hours tick agonisingly by.

6. Sunshine

Just as 28 Days Later saw Boyle supplying his signature twist to the horror genre, Sunshine does the same thing for sci-fi. Even the screen writer (Alex Garland) and star (Cillian Murphy) are the same. In this somewhat underappreciated gem, a small crew of astronauts embarks from a dying Earth on a mission to jump start the Sun, but gets diverted by a distress signal. Despite a tonally jarring final act, Sunshine remains a distinctively downbeat, beautifully shot slice of brooding sci-fi.

5. Shallow Grave

Boyle’s cinematic debut is a lean, noirish crime thriller set in a mid-’90s Edinburgh flatshare. It’s not drugs that are the temptation for Ewan McGregor’s flawed protagonist this time around, but rather greed. When he and his two companions stumble across the body of their mysterious new flatmate, an accompanying bag of money prompts them to make the kind of decisions that will only ever lead to catastrophe. The way Boyle unfurls this slow motion car crash of a movie provides an early calling card for his talents.

4. Slumdog Millionaire

It’s not difficult to name the Danny Boyle film that has made the biggest, broadest cultural impact. Slumdog Millionaire is without doubt the director’s crossover hit, winning eight of its ten Academy Award nominations (including both Best Picture and Best Director for Boyle) on its way to earning $378 million at the box office. It follows Dev Patel’s Jamal Malik from a Mumbai slum to the brink of fame and fortune, all with the kind of brio and technical bravura that has become Boyle’s stock in trade.

3. Steve Jobs

Criminally and inexplicably overlooked at the time of its release, Steve Jobs is a brilliantly inventive study of the late Apple co-founder. Its masterstroke is to distil the great man’s essence by focusing on three key Apple product launches over a 14 year period, with each of its three acts playing out in real time. Dynamically scripted by Aaron Sorkin of The Social Network fame, and every bit as vital as that earlier film, Steve Jobs has to go down as one of the greatest biopics of the 21st century.

2. 28 Days Later

Danny Boyle had only ever made one sequel before 28 Years Later (2017’s T2 Trainspotting), so it’s a testament to 2002’s 28 Days Later that the director has chosen to return to his vision of a ravaged UK dystopia. It still stands up today, even with modern 4K TV sets proving less than flattering to some of the early handheld camera shots. Boyle’s take on an unusually mobile variety of zombie would prove hugely influential across following decades, but it’s the interaction of its human cast that leaves a lasting mark.

1. Trainspotting

Danny Boyle’s second movie is the one that truly put him on the map and attracted the attention of Hollywood. It somehow manages the trick of faithfully translating the filth and the depravity of Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel about a group of Edinburgh junkies to the big screen without completely alienating a mainstream crowd. Ewan McGregor’s Mark Renton, Ewen Bremner’s Spud, Jonny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy, and Robert Carlyle’s Begbie have all entered into the British cultural firmament, as central to the ’90s UK experience as Britpop and New Labour.