28 Days Later

 

I recently delivered my lecture "Real Zombies" at the Mablethorpe group, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2026/09/mablethorpe-presentation-videos-3.html. In this talk I have always referred to the apocalyptic film 28 Days Later, but I have never watched it. I did see the first quarter of an hour once, many years ago, but never the rest of it. Therefore, the evening before I left for the Lincolnshire venue I decided to watch the entire movie for research purposes. It was made in 2002 and directed by Danny Boyle, best known for his surreal and bleak shock-factor films like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. The scriptwriter is Alex Garland, a novelist turned screenwriter with a taste for dystopian stories with a dark tone. I have previously reviewed his movie Ex Machina which he also directed, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2025/10/ex-machina.html. There is a prologue scene in which a zombie virus escapes from a laboratory, but I found it hard to take seriously because the scientist is played by David Schneider, a comedian I know very well from his collaborations with Steve Coogan, of which I'm a big fan. The virus causes people to turn into zombie-like entities which attack and bite other people, thus spreading the virus further; a familiar and regularly used trope. The next scene has the main character Jim, played by Cillian Murphy, waking up alone in a London hospital, in a situation reminiscent of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids. He wanders the empty streets of the city desperately looking for other people. How on earth the film makers managed to shoot that scene in crowded London and make it look deserted is amazing. They must have filmed in midsummer in the early hours of a Sunday morning. Jim eventually realizes what has happened when he encounters "the Infected" and has to flee from them. Luckily he meets some other people who are not infected. A woman named Selena and a father and daughter. The father, Frank, is a likeable London cabbie played by another Irish actor, Brendan Gleeson. He has a daughter called Hannah in her early teens; and the two of them are struggling to survive in an East End tower block. Frank is jolly and hopeful, but he is sometimes reckless in his optimism and takes terrible risks. Selena is a bit of a cliché, the "apocalypse poser", see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/12/prepper-posers.html and: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/03/insider-posers.html. She mellows a bit later in the story though. They all team up and begin a journey, looking for anybody who can help them. I've found this often happens in post-apocalyptic fiction; another example is The Road, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-road.html.

They end up at a location near Manchester where they come across a group of men who call themselves "soldiers" although it is more likely they are just ordinary blokes who happened upon an abandoned military base and are just play-acting. Their leader is played very well by Christopher Eccleston, pre-Doctor Who. This was the same year he starred in The Second Coming, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/01/ben-emlyn-jones-live-at-truth-seekers.html and: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/08/apocalypse-soon.html. To begin with, the men are helpful and obliging, serving the main characters food and giving them comfortable accommodation in an old stately home where there is a water and electricity supply. It is fortified against attacks by the Infected. Soon afterwards though, it turns out these men have dastardly intentions and consider their guests as prisoners. Jim has to stage a rescue mission to free the girls from captivity. It's quite exciting and I wondered how he was going to do it. However, there are some elements of the film I found pretty incredulous. Despite living in a dystopian hellhole, Selena is always depicted as very well groomed. Her clothing is clean and her hair is styled in a trendy spiky cut. This is despite Jim having trouble shaving because of the lack of water. There are many zombie flicks I really like such as the series by George A Romero and the Resident Evil ones. 28 Days Later has some good elements from the genre as well as some fertile original ones, but it lacks a certain vividness that you find in the former two examples. Despite that, I'd say it's worth watching, especially if you like the zombie apocalypse milieu.