Here's how the story is always told: After the international success of George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," what quickly crystalized into the zombie movie had a boom period throughout the eighties. By the nineties, the flow of such films had trickled to a stop before totally disappearing by the end of the decade. Novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland, inspired by his love of Romero's classics, decided to write his own take on the premise at the start of the new millennium. His collaborator on "The Beach," Danny Boyle, loved the script and decided to direct it. "28 Days Later..." came out in 2002, was hailed by critics as the scariest movie in years, and would prompt a zombie revival. The resulting renewal of interest in shambling corpses would outlast previous flirtations with the sub-genre, becoming a sensation in the worlds of comics, television, and memes, moving thoroughly into the mainstream in the process. From this perspective, "28 Days Later" is easily among the most important horror movies of the 21st century thus far. This telling of the tale is not entirely true. The ever-mutable zombie was already popular in video games, which Garland credited with inspiring him to write "28 Days Later." Undead gut munchers never entirely went away and there's been much pedantic debate over whether Boyle and Garland's film technically qualifies as a zombie flick anyway. Either way, "28 Days Later" did have an immediate and obvious impact on the horror genre and cinema in general. Twenty-three years later, how does the film hold up?
Animal activities break into a laboratory and free chimpanzee test subjects, unaware that they are infected with what is known as the Rage Virus. The disease spreads through blood or saliva, transforming the infectee into a mindlessly violent killer within minutes. Less than a month after this event, London has already become devastated. That's when Jim awakens from a coma into a city that seems deserted, with no idea what happened. He quickly discovers the rage infected populace and is only saved by Selena, a survivor who is scavenging through the nearly abandoned London for food and supplies. The two soon meet up with Frank and his daughter Hannah, who have been hiding in their flat. Hearing radio messages from a military base in Manchester, the quartet begins the perilous journey towards what they hope is the last bastion of civilization. What they find is not what they hope for and the threat of the Rage-infected hordes are never far away.
The opening images of "28 Days Later" are of violence, political strife, and mass executions. This is quickly revealed as footage one of the chimp test subjects is being forced to watch. Humans are monkeys too, of course, and this is the first sign of the themes the film is dealing with. "28 Days Later" presents a world in which order has been overturned. In a matter of days, society has collapsed and the majority of people in Great Britain have been reduced to screeching, homicidal maniacs. The social structures we count on to protect us, amenities as simple as running water and fresh food, have failed. The old world is dead and a new, terrifying one has risen in its place. And there's no going back. The September 11th terrorist attacks would occur while "28 Days Later" was filming. There was no way Garland, Boyle, and their team knew Earth was on the verge of entering a chaotic new century. Despite that, their film seems to perfectly capture the anxieties that would grip the globe soon enough. In "28 Days Later," no one can be trusted. Your closest friend or love one can turn into a vicious killer with little warning. Institutions like religion and the military have fallen towards squalor and authoritarianism. We fear our brother and are now ruled by paranoia and a base need to survive, everything around us shattering into chaos. It was an accurate reading of the international mood in the weeks and months following September, 2001.
Boyle and Garland have assured us that they were inspired more by the fear of disease than societal collapse when conceiving "28 Days Later" though. In the two decades since the film's release, the world has suffered another paradigm shifting crisis. And COVID-19 spreads a lot easier than the Rage Virus does. The most striking and eerie sequences in “28 Days Later” remain the scenes of Jim exploring an eerily empty London. It's quiet, the streets devoid of people. Enough signs remain that people where once here but they are surely gone now. It's almost as if Jim has awaken into a world where everyone else has vanished. Many certainly observed that the shots of London here – captured, miraculously, early in the morning before people left for work – closely resembles the city during the 2020 lock-downs. As alien and unsettling as the images where in 2002, they are more unsettling now that we know how plausible such events truly are.
Let us stop back for a minute. People way too hung-up on details insist that the Rage infected populace, being neither revived corpses nor cannibals, do not qualify as zombies. This ignores that the term “zombie” has always covered a wide range of cinematic ghouls and can be generally applied to any faceless horde of attacking, diseased humanoids. These were not the first running zombies in film history. However, the Rage Virus certainly turbo-boosted what was previously thought of mostly as shuffling revenants. They are wild-eyed, baring teeth, covered with sweat and constantly oozing blood and spit. A crowd of them emerging out of the dark, running at full speed and with no desire beyond killing the first thing they get their hands on, is certainly a terrifying sight. The image of infected people, still running while ablaze or being peppered with gunfire, is about as visceral a threat as can be conceived.
It does represent a reshuffling of what the zombie means as a cultural symbol. These are not slowly creeping reminders of our own mortality, as in Romero's classics. Instead, they are fast moving attackers. They brim with infection, spewing blood and leaking fluid from every pour. They announce their presence with screams and wails. Seemingly, they are everywhere, emerging from the shadows to attack. The infection spreads almost instantaneously too. The opening scene features a crazed chimpanzee attacking someone, setting up the parallel that the infected resembles primitive predecessors to human beings more than people themselves. The viewer's point-of-view is also aligned with this ape in the opening shot. All of us are only one small turn, the film seems to be saying, from turning into a raging monster. “28 Days Later” represents not so much a fear of disease or the grim inevitability of death but of people, as unpredictable beings whose veneer of civility can easily slip away and reveal the savage animal beneath.
Animal activities break into a laboratory and free chimpanzee test subjects, unaware that they are infected with what is known as the Rage Virus. The disease spreads through blood or saliva, transforming the infectee into a mindlessly violent killer within minutes. Less than a month after this event, London has already become devastated. That's when Jim awakens from a coma into a city that seems deserted, with no idea what happened. He quickly discovers the rage infected populace and is only saved by Selena, a survivor who is scavenging through the nearly abandoned London for food and supplies. The two soon meet up with Frank and his daughter Hannah, who have been hiding in their flat. Hearing radio messages from a military base in Manchester, the quartet begins the perilous journey towards what they hope is the last bastion of civilization. What they find is not what they hope for and the threat of the Rage-infected hordes are never far away.
The opening images of "28 Days Later" are of violence, political strife, and mass executions. This is quickly revealed as footage one of the chimp test subjects is being forced to watch. Humans are monkeys too, of course, and this is the first sign of the themes the film is dealing with. "28 Days Later" presents a world in which order has been overturned. In a matter of days, society has collapsed and the majority of people in Great Britain have been reduced to screeching, homicidal maniacs. The social structures we count on to protect us, amenities as simple as running water and fresh food, have failed. The old world is dead and a new, terrifying one has risen in its place. And there's no going back. The September 11th terrorist attacks would occur while "28 Days Later" was filming. There was no way Garland, Boyle, and their team knew Earth was on the verge of entering a chaotic new century. Despite that, their film seems to perfectly capture the anxieties that would grip the globe soon enough. In "28 Days Later," no one can be trusted. Your closest friend or love one can turn into a vicious killer with little warning. Institutions like religion and the military have fallen towards squalor and authoritarianism. We fear our brother and are now ruled by paranoia and a base need to survive, everything around us shattering into chaos. It was an accurate reading of the international mood in the weeks and months following September, 2001.
Let us stop back for a minute. People way too hung-up on details insist that the Rage infected populace, being neither revived corpses nor cannibals, do not qualify as zombies. This ignores that the term “zombie” has always covered a wide range of cinematic ghouls and can be generally applied to any faceless horde of attacking, diseased humanoids. These were not the first running zombies in film history. However, the Rage Virus certainly turbo-boosted what was previously thought of mostly as shuffling revenants. They are wild-eyed, baring teeth, covered with sweat and constantly oozing blood and spit. A crowd of them emerging out of the dark, running at full speed and with no desire beyond killing the first thing they get their hands on, is certainly a terrifying sight. The image of infected people, still running while ablaze or being peppered with gunfire, is about as visceral a threat as can be conceived.
It does represent a reshuffling of what the zombie means as a cultural symbol. These are not slowly creeping reminders of our own mortality, as in Romero's classics. Instead, they are fast moving attackers. They brim with infection, spewing blood and leaking fluid from every pour. They announce their presence with screams and wails. Seemingly, they are everywhere, emerging from the shadows to attack. The infection spreads almost instantaneously too. The opening scene features a crazed chimpanzee attacking someone, setting up the parallel that the infected resembles primitive predecessors to human beings more than people themselves. The viewer's point-of-view is also aligned with this ape in the opening shot. All of us are only one small turn, the film seems to be saying, from turning into a raging monster. “28 Days Later” represents not so much a fear of disease or the grim inevitability of death but of people, as unpredictable beings whose veneer of civility can easily slip away and reveal the savage animal beneath.
In other words, “28 Days Later” is making a similar point to what Boyle and Garland said with “The Beach.” It doesn't take a lot to turn people into savages. In fact, it's hard to shake the fear that barbarism is the default state of the human animal. In “The Beach,” this idea was turned on its head as an indictment of a privileged American's overly macho Rambo fantasies. In “28 Days Later,” it's employed much more literally. In the final act, after Selene and Hannah have been captured by the military types and the severity of what is happening here has been established, Jim is left outside the facility. He sneaks around and kills the guards, breaks in, attacks the bad guys, and rescues the girls. When he comes face to face with Selene, she mistakes him for one of the infected at first. This brings ideas of women having all too understandable fears of men to mind. It also unironically makes the protagonist seem like a bad-ass action hero, while vaguely gesturing at pseudo-profound ideas about whether the civilized man is actually civilized at all.
This is why, perhaps, I've been reluctant to embrace “28 Days Later” to the degree that many other cultural critics have. In the years after the film's success, when the zombie genre would become a cottage industry of its own, stories of these type would quickly burn me out. This is not only because there were a lot of them. It's also because right-wing survivalist douche-bag types would co-opt the genre. The universal themes that made me a fan of zombie stories would be traded out for tales of how paranoid gun nuts could be total bad-ass if the structure of polite society wasn't there to hold them back. I don't think Garland and Boyle are telling a story like that in “28 Days Later.” That a group of far-left animal activist types are responsible for unleashing the virus on the world doesn't make a conservative reading of the material impossible but I doubt that was intended.
What does separate “28 Days Later” from the far more reactionary zombie stories that followed is that the freedom of a world without rules isn't the sole reason these sequences bring an odd comfort to them. Instead, the film points out something almost optimistic. “28 Days Later” is a movie about how there's little separating people from brutally murderous animals. About how it wouldn't take much for society as we know it to fall apart into utter chaos. It isn't making a nihilistic statement about human nature though. Because kindness does exist in this world. Selene helps Jim. Slowly, while exploring the very green ruins of the English countryside, they develop an attraction to each other. Frank still loves and adores his daughter, doing everything he can to protect her. He welcomes the visitors with open arms. Yes, people can be awful. Yes, the world is a fucked-up place. Selene chops up her previous traveling partner the minute he gets infected. Jim has to beat an infected child to death to survive. That doesn't mean we have to discard all our good nature to survive. That's what truly separates us from the chimpanzees.
That somewhat conflicting idea, that the human animal contains both an endless capacity for cruelty and an ability to love and protect, probably would be a lot harder to buy without a prime cast. Luckily, “28 Days Later” does assemble a fine cast. Cillian Murphy was all but a complete unknown at the time, emerging more as a stage talent than a film one. He plays Jim as a relatable every man, a sensible and average guy thrust into an impossible situation and forced to survive. Naomie Harris, as Selene, strikes the viewer as a deeply practical person, beaten down by the awful circumstance she's in. She is not without a kinder heart within, that slowly reveals itself. Brendan Gleeson, meanwhile, is an utterly lovable teddy bear as Frank, projecting warmth and practicality in every scene... Until that formidable size is later used to make him a threatening physical presence once he's infected. Megan Burns is a sharp-witted young woman that the viewer immediately wants to protect. Simply put, we care about these characters. That's really important to making “28 Days Later” an effective movie.
These are the positive and negative qualities of “28 Days Later.” It has a story full of big ideas, some more simplistic than others. It has a story that verges towards the shapeless yet is most effective when not enforcing a structure upon itself. The cast is lovable but ultimately reduced to players in a familiar set-up. None of this addresses what the critics were saying in 2002. That “28 Days Later” was the scariest movie of the year, if not all time. No film benefits from hype like that. Which is not to say that “28 Days Later” doesn't bring some intensity your way. The “fast zombie” as a trope would quickly be badly abused by less talented directors. That doesn't change that the Infected are a terrifying threat, red-eyed and spewing blood and always aggressive. The scenes where they leap through glass doors or barred windows, attacking suddenly and violently, sure are a shock. Moreover, John Murphy's score keeps the heart pumping throughout, building tension during a number of key sequence. Boyle doesn't operate in cheap jump scares and is instead seeking to create a mood where chaos can strike at any moment. He largely succeeds.
Much was written, at the time, about the decision to shoot “28 Days Later” on digital video. That makes the little-seen “Strumpet” and “Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise” clear predecessors. The grainy and gritty visuals do contribute a kind of immediacy to the film. It adds extra starkness to the shots of an abandoned London. It contributes to a sense that we, the viewer, are as much dragged along by these events as the characters are. During the best moments, Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography also brings an incredible sense of motion with it. A frantic point-of-view shot racing around the outside of a wall or attached to the point of a jet are two examples. I do miss the preciseness of the cinematography seen in “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave” though, as effective as the digital harshness on display here is.
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