Britflix: 28 Days Later

In the first two decades of the 21^st century we saw the resurrection of the zombie genre. One of the key films responsible for this revival was 28 Days Later, a film that is now 20 years old.

Jim (Cillian Murphy) is a bike courier who awakes from a 28-day long coma and finds that Central London has been abandoned. He discovers that Britain had suffered an outbreak of the rage virus which turns people into ravenous, flesh-eating monsters. Whilst travelling around London Jim teams up with some other survivors and when they hear a radio message from an army unit offering a cure they decide to make the journey up north.

2002 saw two films that helped bring the horror genre back to life in the UK. One of them was Dog Soldiers, a film that quickly earned a cult following and was an abashed B-Movie. 28 Days Later was obviously the other film and it had more lofty ambitions. It was directed by Danny Boyle who was known at the time for making Trainspotting and The Beach, and acclaimed novelist Alex Garland made his debut as a screenwriter. What they created was one of the best British horror films ever.

28 Days Later had a great setup for horror where a man wakes up to find that the apocalypse has happened. The scenes of Jim wandering around an empty London were particularly haunting considering the hustle and bustle of that city. These scenes ended up having added resonance because the COVID pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns turned major cities into ghost towns.

28 Days Later brought new life to the zombie genre with one simple change: let the zombies run. The infected in 28 Days Later were not actually the living dead, they were living humans who were reduced to their basic instincts which were to feed. They were nothing but hungry beasts. This change made 28 Days Later influential since the Dawn of the Dead remake and World War Z also used fast zombies. Shaun of the Dead also made references to 28 Days Later because there was a news report saying rage-infected monkeys caused the outbreak, and in Shaun of the Dead’s DVD extras they point out zombies weren’t fast, contrary to popular brief.

The infected made for a constant threat because of their speed and relentless nature. If one or two were after someone their only hope was to fight. If there were more then their situation was dire. There were some great intense moments in the film, like when Jim first met the infected, and when the survivors needed to quickly change a tire before a spawn of infected arrived. If someone becomes infected they would change quickly, as shown during the harrowing scene when Frank (Brendan Gleeson) changed in front of his daughter.

28 Days Later was influential on The Walking Dead, both the comic book and the TV series. Jim and Rick Grimes were everyman characters who suffered from an accident that left them in a coma and woke up in an abandoned hospital. Both characters also had to explore their empty hometowns and try to figure out what happened.

Another idea The Walking Dead used from 28 Days Later was a group of survivors being tricked with radio messages of salvation, and the zombies being used as an assault on a base. In 28 Days Later the soldiers trick Jim and his companions to travel to their base so they use the women for breeding, whilst in the fourth season of The Walking Dead the residents of Terminus were in reality cannibals. The opening episode of The Walking Dead’s fifth season was a lot like the climax to 28 Days Later.

As well as being influential, 28 Days Later was influenced by other post-apocalyptic fiction. The most obvious influence was George A. Romero’s Living Dead films, particularly Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. In 28 Days Later when the survivors arrived at a store to loot for supplies and refuel their car was a lot like the scene in Dawn of the Dead where the survivors refuelled their helicopter. A direct reference to Dawn to the Dead was when Jim had to kill an infected child.

The Day of the Dead references came to be when the 28 Days Later survivors go up to the army base. Both films had a theme that the army was nefarious and not to be trusted. In both films the inflicted were being studied, although in 28 Days Later Major West’s (Christopher Eccleston) studies were a lot more rudimentary.

Alex Garland also stated that Day of the Triffids was an influence and it’s easy to see why because both stories had characters waking up to find out an apocalyptic event had happened. The scenes of Jim exploring London did feel like the 1901 novel The Purple Cloud where a lonely man ends up exploring empty cities around the world.

28 Days Later gave Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris their first major roles and it turned out to be excellent casting. Murphy would go on to play The Scarecrow in Batman Begins and Harris was Calypso in the Pirates of the Caribbean series and they are now highly successful actors. Their characters were given distinctive arcs. Murphy’s Jim was an everyman character and the audience’s surrogate since he was new to the world of post-apocalyptic Britain. He was a character who needed to harden and become more ruthless to survive, as shown during the final act.

Harris’ Selena had the opposite journey since she had lived through the outbreak and become cold because of it. She was willing to kill companions or ditch them if they were infected or a liability. She was a badass with her toned body, short spiky hair, and machete. Selena regained her humanity because of her bond with Hannah (Megan Burns). She became physically and emotionally protective of the teenager.

Whilst 28 Days Later was a bleak film, there were lighter, more hopeful moments. Frank made some dad jokes when the group started their travels, the characters looked to have fun when raiding the store and getting some luxuries like chocolate and alcohol. There was a moment of tranquillity when the survivors stopped in the countryside and watched some horses roam free.

28 Days Later still holds up as a great horror film. It was a wonderfully bleak piece of work that was eerie and intense. It’s an essential zombie film.