28 Days Later

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28 Days Later
Widescreen DVD cover
Directed by	Danny Boyle
Produced by	Andrew Macdonald DNA Films
Written by	Alex Garland
Starring	Cillian Murphy Naomie Harris Brendan Gleeson Christopher Eccleston Megan Burns
Music by	John Murphy
Cinematography	Anthony Dod Mantleoff
Editing by	Chris Gill
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s)	November 1, 2002 June 27th, 2003 June 27, 2003 September 4, 2003 October 9, 2003
Running time	113 min.
Language	English
Budget	£5,000,000
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28 Days Later (2002) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. Set in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 21st century, the film concerns the breakdown of society following the release of a plague known as “Rage” (which almost instantly locks those who are infected by it into zombie-like creatures, a state of irreversible hyperactivity and murderous insanity), and the struggle of a handful of survivors to come to terms with the ruins of everything they once knew. A critical and commercial success, the film is most widely recognised for its images of an entirely deserted London, and is shot almost entirely on digital video.

Contents 1 Style and inspiration 2 Plot 2.1 Introduction 2.2 28 days later… 2.3 Jim’s house 2.4 Frank and Hannah 2.5 Meeting the soldiers 2.6 Quarantine? 2.7 Attacking the mansion 2.8 28 days later… 3 Alternative endings 4 Miscellaneous 5 The “Infected” 6 Sequel 7 Filming details 8 Public and critical reception 9 Technical details 10 External links

[edit] Style and inspiration

The film was well received both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

"The power of the film is not that it hasn't been done before, but that it hasn't been done recently." - Kim Newman, Empire

Similarities in the concept could be drawn to David Cronenberg's horror film Rabid and in storyline to George A. Romero's The Crazies, as well as The Omega Man, which were about a manmade disease that drives its victims insane. The latter example also presented the disease as destroying society and civilization seemingly worldwide as humanity became ravaged. The film also bears similarity to John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids in several of its story elements, notably in scenes where the central character awakes in a deserted hospital amidst a post-apocalyptic London. The plot device of the military post also bears noticeable resemblances to the warren of the Efrafa in Watership Down. The film also contains similarities to James Herbert's novel The Fog.

Boyle has written that 28 Days Later is not a science fiction or horror film, but rather a drama. Indeed, the film’s “horror moments” are few and far between, and the bulk of the running time is dedicated to character study and building suspense. The film’s score was composed by British composer John Murphy and was released in a score / song compilation in 2003.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Introduction

The film opens at an animal testing laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where three Animal Liberation Front-style activists break into the laboratory at night and discover chimpanzees being subjected to torturous experiments. A technician desperately tries to stop the group from releasing the animals, claiming that they have been infected with an extremely potent viral disease known only as “Rage,” which has made them irrational and extremely violent. The activists refuse to believe the technician and release a chimpanzee, which immediately attacks a female activist. The woman, screaming that she is burning, regurgitates blood, spraying and subsequently infecting another activist. As she was screaming her pain, others were trying to kill her before she becomes infected, but too late. Within half a minute, she has transformed into a state of irreversible perpetual rage, and attacks the scientist in the room. It is unknown about the other 2 activists in the room, when one had the woman's blood on his face.

[edit] 28 days later…

Twenty-eight days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy), a good-natured Irish bicycle courier, wakes up in a deserted London hospital, naked. Exploring the hospital, he discovers that he is the only person present; the hospital is deserted and trashed. He was presumably in a coma, but how he survived with the life-support equipment down is not explained, per se. The initial shots suggest that his caregivers provided enough intravenous fluids to sustain him for longer than usual. The room he wakes in is also locked from the outside and the key appears to have been slid into the room from outside. Leaving the hospital and crossing Westminster Bridge towards the Houses of Parliament, Jim discovers that London is in the same state; the streets are empty, the great monuments loom silently and ominously over a deserted, empty metropolis, through which Jim walks to the theme of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's song “East Hastings”. The streets are filled with signs of something terrible having happened: Jim walks past an overturned London bus, sees government posters declaring “QUARANTINE,” and wanders endlessly alone through streets filled with the debris of everyday life. He comes across a looted newsagent's shop and briefly looks at a newspaper announcing that the Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency, then comes across an advertising board surrounding the Statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, which is covered in panicked, hand-written notes searching for missing people.

As darkness falls, Jim enters a church and, looking over the main hall sees piles of corpses spread over the floor and pews. Not everyone present is dead, however; his presence attracts the attention of a handful of people crawling through the carpet of bodies with their faces burrowed into the flesh of the deceased. Jim goes through a door at the top of the stairs and an Anglican priest lurches towards Jim, snarling and grasping in a frightening way, prompting Jim to knock him to the ground. As he flees the church, Jim is chased by several snarling, bloodstained people who pursue him with almost superhuman speed; before they can catch him, however, he is rescued by two people wearing masks who kill his pursuers by exploding a petrol station, then rush him to their hideout in an abandoned section of the London Underground. Jim’s rescuers are Mark (Noah Huntley), an amiable but world-weary young man, and Selena (Naomie Harris), a hardened and ruthlessly pragmatic young woman, who worked as a pharmacist before the Rage spread. (Selena’s knowledge and supply of different medicines plays a role later on as she helps both Jim and another character). Jim, terrified and confused, demands to know what has happened since the traffic accident that put him in his coma; and so, Mark and Selena outline what has happened in the last twenty-eight days.

Following the outbreak in Cambridge, “RAGE” spread across rural Britain, spreading quickly and turning normal people and animals into “The Infected”—vicious, mindless RAGE filled creatures, intent only on killing. The Infected carry the disease in their blood and saliva; anyone who comes into contact with either must be killed or will become infected themselves. As the British Army was deployed to blockade the cities and prevent the infected from entering urban areas, the British government ordered a mass emergency evacuation of Britain—but by the time the evacuation began, it was too late, as the Infected had overrun the army blockades and entered the cities. Public services, such as water, electricity and communications were shut down, and civil authority and amenities collapsed. Selena tells Jim that the last radio announcement on the BBC told of infections breaking out in Paris and New York City. Mark describes the horror of the evacuation, losing his entire family in a mass stampede at Paddington Station. There is no government, no authority, nothing to protect them, and the rest of the world has probably suffered the same fate as Britain. Jim is the first uninfected person the other two have seen in six days.

[edit] Jim’s house

Jim, completely shell-shocked, insists on trying to reach his parents’ house, despite Mark and Selena’s callous observations that his parents are most likely dead or Infected. Jim is adamant, however, and rather than let him go by himself (as he will almost certainly not return) the others reluctantly agree to accompany him. On arriving there, however, Jim finds that his parents have committed suicide together, believing that the world was over and that Jim would not wake up from his coma in the hospital. Shattered, Jim enjoys memories of living at home; but the candle he absent-mindedly lights attracts a couple of the Infected—two people, he is horrified to discover, who once were his next-door neighbor and his neighbor’s daughter. Mark and Selena kill the Infected, but Mark has been badly cut and blood from the attacker has mixed with his. Worried that he is infected, Selena instantly and ruthlessly hacks Mark to death with a machete, ignoring his pleas and screams. Jim is now almost as terrified of her, as Selena makes it clear that she will be more than willing to do the same for him “in a heartbeat” should he be infected. She informs him that once exposed to infected blood or saliva, a person has roughly twenty seconds before they become violent, thus enforcing Selena’s cold, hard-earned life philosophy—“staying alive’s as good as it gets.”

[edit] Frank and Hannah

Jim and Selena venture out once again, but are surprised to see a set of working Christmas lights in the window of a far-off tower block despite the fact that electric services have been discontinued for many weeks. They climb an improvised ladder fashioned from shopping trolleys that leads up to the main stairwell. The duo climbs the stairs, only to realize halfway up that Infected have followed them in. Jim couldn't run anymore as he kept telling Selena to slow down. They are rescued by an unknown man wearing police riot gear, who beats and kills the Infected on the staircase and ushers them into his flat. The man introduces himself as Frank (Brendan Gleeson), a cabdriver, and introduces his teenage daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns). They have not seen anyone in weeks, and are only too happy to have Jim and Selena as company. A surreal and uncomfortable scene follows in which the group shares a bottle of Crème de Menthe, and Jim and Selena settle down in the flat for the night.

In the morning, Frank explains that they cannot survive in London, as they are running out of water—it has not rained in weeks—and as Frank cannot leave Hannah alone in the building, they are thus surrounded by the Infected with dwindling food supplies. There is hope, however; Frank has picked up a pre-recorded radio broadcast, running on a loop, made by a group of soldiers who have set up a fortified base at one of the army blockades on a motorway, built weeks before to protect Manchester. The message also claims the soldiers have “the answer to Infection.” Deciding that Selena and Jim need Frank and Hannah as much as Frank and Hannah need them, the group eventually decides to leave London in Frank’s cab. The group go “shopping” at an abandoned supermarket for supplies and narrowly avoid the Infected on several occasions (including a tunnel under the Thames and a service station, where Jim is forced to kill a small boy who has been infected), and spend the night at the ruins of a castle. During their journey, the four bond as a slightly odd family, and it is clear that Selena, drawn into this family dynamic, is losing her pragmatic viewpoint on life.

[edit] Meeting the soldiers

While travelling along the motorway, they see that Manchester is engulfed by a massive firestorm, as there is no one left alive to fight the fires. They arrive at the blockade, only to find a deserted military camp strewn with dead soldiers and civilians; the blockade has been abandoned, which causes Frank to lose all hope. Storming away from the others, Frank is accidentally infected by a drop of tainted blood that lands in his eye. Realizing that he doesn’t have long to live, Frank tells Hannah that he loves her very much, and desperately pushes her away from him before he turns. In a heart-rending scene, Frank becomes an Infected and, snarling, moves to attack them. While Selena screams for the indecisive Jim to kill him while he has the chance, Frank is shot by several soldiers wearing NBC suits, who appear from nowhere.

The group of three soldiers transport Jim, Selena, and Hannah to a mansion fortified as a small military base. Their leader is the urbane Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston), who explains that he and his seven soldiers are all that is left of the force which had been protecting Manchester, and that the fires in the city have driven hundreds of Infected into the nearby area, prompting his detachment to fortify the house. In an enclosed courtyard, Jim is shown Mailer, an infected soldier in chains, who is being kept by the major to determine how long it takes for the Infected to die from starvation.

Broken from the loss of Frank, Jim, Selena, and Hannah eat an uncomfortable meal with the brash, crude soldiers (one of them seems to suffer from alopecia areata) with the exception of the sergeant, Farrell, a solemn and conscientious man. The soldiers are called from the meal to defend the house against a sudden attack by the Infected. After the attack (when a corporal, highly charged with adrenaline after the battle, attempts to force himself on Selena), Major West takes Jim aside, and explains that he cannot let the three of them leave; he has promised his lonely, suicidal and rebellious soldiers sexual access to women as a means of giving them hope, and of “rebuilding” the world. The “answer” to Infection involves waiting until the Infected have all starved to death, and in the mean time, luring whatever non-Infected they can to the base to acquire the women for little more than rape by the soldiers. Horrified, Jim tries to escape with his friends, but is knocked unconscious by one of the soldiers. When he wakes up, Major West offers one last chance to join them. When he refuses, he is thrown into the cellar with Sergeant Farrell, who has unsuccessfully tried to protect Jim and the women.

[edit] Quarantine?

In the cellar, the sergeant tells Jim that the Infection never spread beyond Britain; the outside world simply quarantined the British Isles and are waiting for the Infected to die out. West’s plan to rebuild the world is unnecessary; the horror of everything he’s seen has merely driven him mad. Farrell, having refused to join in the rape of Selena and Hannah, is taken out into the gardens along with Jim by the corporal and another soldier. Both are to be executed, and Jim sees the bodies of dozens of people who have been killed by the soldiers. The corporal plans to use his bayonet to kill Farrell, however, the corporal’s companion shoots the sergeant first, claiming the man does not deserve that method of execution. A struggle ensues between the two soldiers and Jim escapes, first hiding amongst the corpses, then climbing over a nearby wall. Whilst on the run, Jim sees the contrails of an aircraft in the sky, proving that the outside world is indeed intact (at least in some ways).

[edit] Attacking the mansion

In the mansion’s bedrooms, Selena, having temporarily driven away the soldiers, manages to drug Hannah with some prescription medication so that she will not care about what will happen to her when sexually assaulted. Before anything can happen, an air raid siren is heard coming from the blockade; Jim, outside the fences and thought dead by the soldiers, has managed to reach the blockade, and is waiting for them to come and kill him. West and one of the soldiers make their way to the barricade and split up to look for Jim, while the rest wait back at the mansion with Selena and Hannah. Jim then kills the one soldier, steals his rifle, and then heads back to the mansion, leaving West behind. West then takes off for the mansion on foot, after killing some Infected who have been attracted to the scene by the noise. Jim, back at the mansion, releases the infected Mailer by shooting his chains, who then escapes into the house, infecting and killing the other soldiers present. As the infected Mailer begins to infect the other soldiers, a soldier was trying to kill Mailer, a new infected, in which Mailer has infected, caught him and the 2 infected dragged the soldier and killing him. Another soldier was hiding from the infected, listening to the the soldier's screaming and watching him being brutally killed. Hannah escapes from her captors and hides from the ensuing chaos.

Jim then kills the hiding soldier by stabbing him with the rifle, while he was running from the infected and try to escape. As Jim was trying to run away from the infected, he finds a soldier hiding beside a bed, the infected breaks in the room, Jim sucessfully escaped by the window, but leaving the soldier behind, as the soldier is dying from the infected. Selena, meanwhile, is still with the corporal, who is dragging her away; they are ambushed by Jim, who mercilessly takes revenge on the sadistic corporal by gouging his eyes out. Horrified, and believing Jim to be Infected, Selena tries to kill him—but she has fallen in love with him and cannot bring herself to do it. Echoing her earlier words that her response was “longer than a heartbeat,” she realizes that Jim is still himself, and they kiss passionately. Hannah, both drugged and also under the impression that Jim is infected, smashes a vase over his head. After clarifying the matter, the three run to the cab—only to be cornered by West who, blaming Jim for killing “his boys,” shoots him in the stomach. Hannah, at the wheel of the cab, steers him back into the house - where he is dragged, screaming, out of the back by Mailer. As he is being ripped apart, Hannah and Selena rush the wounded Jim to a hospital.

[edit] 28 days later…

The scene changes to the mountains of Cumbria. It is another twenty-eight days later; as predicted by West, the Infected are slowly dying from starvation. In the film’s coda (shot on 35mm film, unlike the rest of the film), Jim reawakens in a country cottage, to find Selena and Hannah, creating the word “hello” out of all the fabric they could find, have managed to attract the attention of a Finnish reconnaissance jet aircraft. As the pilot speaks to his superiors (requesting “Lähetätkö helikopterin?” or “Will you send a helicopter?”), Hannah and Selena begin to cheer and Jim slowly smiles. Although their fate, along with the fate of the rest of the country, is left open-ended, presumably parts of the world have escaped the infection.

[edit] Alternative endings

The DVD of the film provides a number of alternative endings. In the first, which is fully filmed, Jim is mortally wounded escaping from the soldiers. Selena and Hannah, having rushed Jim to a local hospital in hope that they might save his life, leave his body there; completing an eerie circle for Jim who began and ended the film alone in a deserted hospital. In some versions of the ending, Jim dreams of the accident that hospitalized him before the film's beginning. The same coda scene of potential rescue from the air then plays, although this time Jim is not present and, amusingly, has effectively been replaced by a chicken.

In a second unfilmed alternative ending, the film picks up at the point where Frank is infected at the military roadblock near Manchester. The director animates the following largely with storyboards and voice overs of the proposed script. This time, the sub-plot involving the soldiers does not take place. In a radical turn, Jim, Selena and Hannah take Frank to a local research complex (the same complex in which the infected chimpanzees were being held in the first scene). Their goal is to attempt to find the cure for the virus, which the radio broadcast had suggested was nearby. A short time after arriving at the research complex, the trio discover a man who has locked himself in one of the rooms, with enough food and water to survive for another week or so he claims. After asked if he sent the radio broadcast, he replies that the soldiers back at the blockade sent the broadcast, but they're all dead now. He then refuses to talk to them any further and simply ignores them. In desperation, Jim brings Hannah outside the room, explaining their situation. In the end, he tells them the cure is a complete blood transfusion. Jim sacrifices himself so that Frank can live. Again, Jim is left alone, infected in a deserted hospital, and Selena, Hannah and Frank move into the room with the man. The director believed that this ending—namely the “cure” of a total blood transfusion—was unbelievable, given that it had already been established that a single drop of infected blood would infect an entire body.

[edit] Miscellaneous

While travelling around London at the beginning of the film, Jim picks up a copy of the Evening Standard. The front page carries a single headline printed in large font: “EVACUATION”, with the sub-heading “Government plans to evacuate Britain.” The main text (which appears to be a list of all of London’s boroughs) surrounds a section filled with smaller headers, including:

• “Military ordered shoot to kill”
• “Dangerous animals on the loose”
• “Military blockades overrun”
• “U.S. warships patrol British coastline”
• “Blair declares state of emergency”
• “Mass exodus of British people causes global crisis”
• “UN to build giant refugee camps”

The last two sub-headers suggest that substantial numbers of the population have in fact escaped from the British Isles successfully.

The film revolves around the genetically engineered disease “Rage”, which is spread through contact with an infected individual's blood and causes sufferers to become mindlessly violent, in much the same way as rabies (itself the Latin word for "rage").

In the film's Special Features, it is revealed that, in order to preserve the suspension of disbelief, relatively unkown actors were cast in the film. The main cast subsequently became well known, notably Christopher Eccleston through Doctor Who, and Cillian Murphy in a variety of films.

[edit] The “Infected”

28 Days Later is not an actual zombie film in that “the Infected” are not undead zombies, but living humans driven insane by a highly communicable virus. As a result, rather than lumbering towards human victims like zombies, the Infected move extremely quickly; and, because of an adrenaline rush, they have great strength and endurance, they are able to kill easily by killing how a regular person could, without any weapons. However, as they are not zombies, the “only way to kill it is to shoot out its brain” rule that applies to zombies does not apply to them, so any wound that could kill a normal human could kill them. Director George A. Romero, who is best known for his zombie movies, explored a similar concept in his 1973 film The Crazies. Like zombies, however, the Infected have an (unexplained) ability to tell fellow Infected apart from regular humans, and do not attack other Infected. The Infected do maintain some semblance of intelligence. They tend to group together in numbers, they sometimes work together when attacking an individual, and they can tell that their reflection is not a potential victim. It is hard to see how the infecteds kill their victims, some believe that they could bite their victims to death, but even a bite wouldn't affect their victims.

A development that Major West pointed out is that the Infected are living human beings, but they seem to never eat food (or human flesh like zombies do), either because they have forgotten how or are so consumed by Rage that they do not bother (in another interesting parallel, rabies victims are rendered unable to drink, which leads to their eventual death by dehydration (along with neurological damage); this is the origin of the classical term for the disease: hydrophobia). Major West correctly surmised that the Infected would all eventually starve to death as a result, though exactly how long was uncertain (one should point out that a regular human body succumbs from lack of water in a matter of days, while dying of starvation in a matter of weeks); he actually had an Infected soldier chained up but not killed for the express purpose of finding out how long it would take for it to starve. In the flash-forward to another "28 days later" at the end of the film (eight weeks after the outbreak), two emaciated, immobile Infected were seen who would soon die of starvation. Similarly, the Infected do not talk or commmunicate otherwise, although there is only one such incident in the movie, in which the Infected boy screams "I hate you!". It was stated on the DVD commentary that this incident was a result of sound editing, which caused one phrase of the voice mix used for the sound of the Infected to become clearer than the rest.

The film is also ambiguous on how far across the planet the Rage virus infection has spread, thus putting the viewer in the position of the characters who also do not know now that communications are gone. Early in the film, Selena tells Jim that the infection spread across all of Great Britain, and that the day before all television communications went down, there were reports of Infections in New York and Paris. However, later in the film, a dejected soldier laments to Jim that because the characters are radio-isolated, as far as they know the infections in New York and Paris were contained and the rest of the planet survived, while the entire island of Great Britain has been quarantined. Another possibility, of course, is that the reports of infection in Paris & New York were faked in order to prevent any more refugees from England trying to escape to the mainland and inadvertently bringing the disease with them.

A hint of this fact is made when Jim is nearly executed, lying on his back in the forest as he sees a passing plane flying at cruise altitude. Another unusual fact is that the virus infects people so quickly that it could not possibly make it to New York on any kind of transportation. The other characters were sceptical of this; however, a sequel is in production (see below) which seems to assume that the rest of the planet stopped the spread of infection and, now that most of the Infected in Britain have starved to death, are going to try to re-colonize it.

Which animals in particular are susceptible to the virus is unknown, although both infected humans and simians are portrayed in the film. During the trip to Manchester, the group spots a family of horses which they believe are not infected; whether this means that the horses even could have been infected is not stated. A bird is seen feasting on an Infected corpse, but does not itself appear to be infected, implying that something at least as genetically different as an avian cannot be affected by the virus.

[edit] Sequel

A sequel, 28 Weeks Later, is currently in production. The title implies that it would take place several months after the first film. Rowan Joffe is in talks to write the script, and Danny Boyle and Alex Garland will take a producing role along side Andrew Macdonald. According to the listing on the Internet Movie Database, the plot will revolve around the idea of Americans arriving about six months after the incidents in the original film and attempting to revitalize an empty Britain. The cast of the original film are being reported as not returning for this film. Jeremy Renner is the only person officially cast for this film so far.

Fox Atomic, in association with HarperCollins, is publishing a graphic novel bridging the two films, entitled "28 Days Later: The Aftermath", written by Steve Niles.

[edit] Filming details

28 Days Later features spectacular scenes set in normally bustling parts of London such as Westminster Bridge, Piccadilly Circus, Horse Guards Parade and Oxford Street. To capture these locations looking empty and desolate, the film crew closed off sections of street for a matter of minutes at a time, usually early in the morning, to minimize disruption. Parts of the film were shot on the Canon XL-1s digital video camera. DV cameras are much smaller and more maneuverable than traditional film cameras, on which such brief shoots would have been impractical. The use of digital video also adds a 'documentary' feel (shaky, unstable) to the film, and adds to the overall realism (see Cinéma vérité).

In the scene where Jim walks by the overturned London bus, the crew were able to place the bus on its side and remove it when the shot was finished, all in under 20 minutes.

The scenes of the M1 motorway completely devoid of traffic were also filmed in limited time slots. In this case, a mobile police roadblock slowed traffic down enough to leave a long section of carriageway empty while the scene was filmed. The section used for filming was actually at Milton Keynes, and nowhere near Manchester.

Filming took place before the September 11, 2001 attacks, and in the audio commentary the director notes that the similarity in film of the "Missing persons" flyers seen in the beginning of the film and how people tried to find lost ones in New York City. The director also notes that they probably would not have been given permission to close off Downing Street to film, after the terrorist attacks.

[edit] Public and critical reception

The film was a considerable success at the box office and became highly profitable on a budget of about £5 million. In the UK, it took £6.1 million, while in the US it became a surprise hit, taking over US$45 million despite a limited release at fewer than 1,500 screens nationwide. Worldwide the film scooped up around $82.7m.

Critical views of the film were positive (with a rating of 89% at RottenTomatoes ^{[citation needed]}) the L.A. Times describing it as a "stylistic tour de force", and efilmcritic.com describing it as "raw, blistering and joyously uncompromising". While most critics were impressed with the technical achievements of the scenes of a devastated London, some were not taken with the overall effect of the film. Philip French, writing in The Observer, said that the film was "at best clutching at a straw", and was a "gory, depressing affair" [1].

[edit] Technical details

• Writing details: Alex Garland
• Original music: Danny Boyle, John Murphy, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Brian Eno
• Release date: November 1, 2002 (UK) June 27, 2003 (U.S.)
• Runtime: 113 min.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
• BBFC Rating: 18
• MPAA Rating: R
• OFLC Rating: MA15+

[edit] External links

• Official website
• 28 Days Later at the Internet Movie Database
• 28 Weeks Later at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Danny Boyle about sequel at Sci Fi Wire
• 28 Days Later Review at b-movies.gr (Greek)
• 28 Days Later review at Cult Fiction