28 Days Later
28 Days Later is a 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. It stars Cillian Murphy as a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to discover that the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus has caused the breakdown of society. Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns, and Brendan Gleeson appear in supporting roles.
Garland took inspiration from George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead film series and John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. Filming took place in various locations in the United Kingdom in 2001. The crew filmed for brief periods during early mornings and temporarily closed streets to capture recognisable and typically busy areas when they were deserted. John Murphy composed an original soundtrack for the film, with other instrumental songs by Brian Eno, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and other artists.
28 Days Later was released on 1 November 2002 in the United Kingdom by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It received generally positive reviews and was a commercial success. Grossing $82.8 million worldwide on a budget of $8 million, it became one of the most profitable horror films of 2002. Reviewers praised Boyle's direction, the cast's performances, Garland's screenplay, the atmosphere and soundtrack.
Despite Boyle not considering it a zombie film, 28 Days Later is credited with reinvigorating the genre and influencing a revival in it a decade after its release, with its fast-running infected and character-driven drama. It has been featured in several "best-of" film lists. The film's success launched its titular film series, featuring three further instalments, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Years Later, and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. A wider franchise also includes the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, and the comic book series 28 Days Later.
Plot
A group of animal rights activists infiltrate a laboratory in Cambridge which houses abnormally aggressive chimpanzees. Despite a scientist warning that the chimpanzees are infected with a highly contagious "Rage" virus, an activist frees one; it attacks her and, within seconds of exposure, she succumbs to the virus. She immediately attacks the others, and the virus spreads rapidly across Great Britain, resulting in total societal collapse.Twenty-eight days later, bicycle courier Jim, who had a traffic accident and fell into a coma before the outbreak, wakes in St Thomas' Hospital in London to find it deserted. Leaving the hospital, Jim wanders the empty streets of London, discovers newspapers headlining a mass evacuation, and eventually enters a church and witnesses the aftermath of a massacre, presumably caused by the infected people. An infected priest and members of the public appear and chase after Jim, but he is rescued by survivors Selena and Mark, who take him to their refuge in a Tube station shop.
At Jim's request, the group travels on foot to his parents' house in Deptford, where he learns that they have died by suicide. When dusk settles in, the group decides to stay the night. Staying up, Jim reminisces family memories and lights a candle, drawing the infected neighbours to the house. Mark is bitten while eliminating them, forcing Selena to kill him. Jim and Selena make their way up Balfron Tower after seeing a makeshift signal lamp in a flat belonging to cab driver Frank and his young daughter Hannah. Frank plays them a military radio broadcast offering protection and "salvation from infection" at a blockade outside Manchester. Frank plans to take Hannah to the blockade, and the four agree to travel together. Reaching Manchester, they find the blockade deserted. Frank, frustrated, kicks a gate on which a dead infected body is balanced. A drop of blood from the corpse falls into Frank's eye, infecting him. As he warns the others to keep their distance, hidden soldiers appear and shoot him dead.
The soldiers bring Jim, Selena and Hannah to a heavily fortified country house under the command of Major Henry West, and treat their guests to a tour and banquet. However, the sanctuary turns out to be a ruse; West reveals to Jim that his broadcast was intended to lure female survivors into sexual slavery to maintain his troops' morale, giving them faith in a future where the human race survives. Jim and Sergeant Farrell refuse to go along with this scheme, so West orders them to be imprisoned. While chained, Farrell tells Jim that the infection has not spread across the Atlantic and that Britain has been quarantined from the rest of the world. Two soldiers shoot Farrell and then argue, allowing Jim to escape into the woods. Jim notices a jet contrail in the sky, showing proof that the outside world is still active.
After luring West away from the mansion with a siren and killing a soldier, Jim returns and frees Private Mailer, an infected soldier kept chained up for observation, to infect and kill the remaining soldiers. One, Corporal Mitchell, attempts to abduct Selena, but Jim kills him. Jim, Selena, and Hannah attempt to escape in Frank's cab, but West, who has hidden in the back seat, shoots Jim in the stomach. Hannah retaliates by putting the cab in reverse, causing Mailer to burst through the rear window and drag West out before mauling him to death as the car drives away.
Another twenty-eight days later, Jim recovers at a remote cottage in Cumbria, where the infected are shown lying on the roads, dying of starvation. As a Hawker Hunter jet flies overhead, Jim, Selena, and Hannah unfurl a huge cloth banner spelling the word "HELLO". All three survivors wave at the jet, and wonder among themselves if the pilot had spotted them.
Cast
- Cillian Murphy as Jim, a bicycle courier who was previously in a coma
- Naomie Harris as Selena, a survivor in London
- Brendan Gleeson as Frank, a taxi driver
- Megan Burns as Hannah, Frank's young daughter
- Christopher Eccleston as Major Henry West
- Noah Huntley as Mark, a fellow survivor with Selena
- Stuart McQuarrie as Sergeant Farrell
- Ricci Harnett as Corporal Mitchell
- Leo Bill as Private Jones
- Luke Mably as Private Clifton
- Junior Laniyan as Private Bell
- Ray Panthaki as Private Bedford
- Sanjay Rambaruth as Private Davis
- Marvin Campbell as Private Mailer
Production
Development
Early influences on writer Alex Garland included the George A. Romero films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, which he loved as a child. Garland claimed to have largely forgotten about the zombie genre until he played the video game Resident Evil, which reminded him how much he loved zombies after "having not really encountered zombies for quite a while". Director Danny Boyle liked Garland's screenplay for a proposed zombie film, having directed the 2000 film adaptation of Garland's 1996 novel The Beach.Rather than portraying zombies as supernatural beings, the film's rage virus was conceived as a biological contagion. Boyle and Garland intended the virus to amplify an inherent aspect of human nature—psychological aggression—depicting rage as an uncontrollable viral force intrinsic to humanity rather than merely a physical infection. This was designed to serve as a metaphor for contemporary social rage, including road rage, air rage, and other everyday aggressive behaviours. On the DVD audio commentary, Garland said the idea of Britain being under quarantine was developed during production, replacing an earlier conception of the outbreak as a worldwide contagion that included a discarded idea of infection boarding a plane to the United States; he linked the quarantine framing to contemporary UK anxieties about BSE and foot-and-mouth disease.
Garland described the supermarket sequence as a deliberate nod to Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and the chained Infected as a nod to the character "Bub" in Day of the Dead. Garland said he was thinking of the plantation dinner sequence from Apocalypse Now Redux when writing the soldiers' dinner scene.
Producer Andrew Macdonald had access to funding from the National Lottery and pitched it to Universal Pictures, who declined to support it. Budget constraints proved to be an issue, with Christopher Eccleston having to take an emergency pay cut. In June 2001, it was reported that Fox Searchlight Pictures had picked up for co-financing as well as worldwide distribution.
Boyle identified John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids as Garland's original inspiration for the story.
Five months after the film was released in Europe, video game publisher NovaLogic hosted a graffiti competition in a cross-promotion with the game Devastation. The connection was owed mainly to the similar theme of a devastated world. The prizes consisted of signed screenplay copies and posters along with DVDs. For the Infected, Boyle took inspiration from real-life diseases, particularly Ebola, with aspects of rabies.