28 Days Later is a 2002 horror film. A literal hate plague begins taking over Britain after animal rights activists set loose an Infected chimp in a lab at Cambridge University. The Rage virus is a virus meant to neutralise violent impulses Gone Horribly Wrong. It has the opposite effect. The chimp starts to excarnify its would-be rescuers. Cue the cut-away.Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes from a coma twenty eight days after the outbreak. He wakes naked in a totally deserted hospital, in the middle of an eerily abandoned London. He's got a scarred-over head wound, an impressive growth of facial hair and no idea of what's going on. Our protagonist wanders around the city, plastic bag of Pepsi cans in hand, while suspenseful music plays. He then meets some non-shambling, angry-arse Infected pseudo-zombies. Soon after he teams up with fellow survivors and kicks some ass in search of the escape and cure promised by the radio broadcasts from a distant barricade.The promised land is far from what it seems, and the scale of the infection has yet to be realised.Survivor Selena (Naomie Harris) is a realist, considering survival the only option and Jim's naiveté a hindrance. Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah, father and daughter, see things less bleakly and suffer for it.The premise is played for drama. The films avoids using the word 'zombie' and avoids several common zombie tropes. The Infected are fast-moving, agile and mindlessly violent. But they are not hungry for brains. The infection itself is devastating, toppling society and causing an apocalypse due to the ease of transmission and the panic. Generally pigeonholed as a zombie movie, nevertheless. The film did fairly well at the box office and has spawned several comics exploring the lacuna of time in between the initial outbreak of infection and the film. It has a sequel, 28 Weeks Later, and another film in the works for 2011.Not to be confused with 28 Days where an alcoholic Sandra Bullock dries out. And is killed by zombies. Or not.
Absurdly Sharp Blade: Subverted as it's shown to take numerous violent hacks for Selena to chop off her first partner's arm with a machete before finally killing him.
Animal Wrongs Group: The cause of Britain going to zombie hell? Activists releasing infected apes.
Apocalypse How: Class 0. It's implied that any survivors have been lied to about the extent of the infection, which turns out to be confined to Britain despite alleged radio broadcasts that said that it had reached Paris and New York.
Beware the Nice Ones: After being subject to a few too many rounds of cruelty and knowing Selena and Hannah are going to get raped by West's men, Jim proves why the cute ones are the ones to watch out for. The same applies to Hannah, who backs the cab containing West straight into the entryway of the house knowing his infected soldiers will get him.
Crazy Survivalist: Although Selena isn't exactly crazy (yet), she's incredibly ruthless and will leave anyone behind if they can't catch up, distrusts others, and openly mocks any plans for salvation. "Staying alive is as good as it gets." She warms up once she's spent some time with the others, though.
Naomi Harris explained that her and Danny Boyle came up with a backstory that Selena had to kill her whole family in one afternoon, including her younger siblings, to explain her harsh outlook on life.
Driver of a Black Cab: Frank avoids this stereotype, but a deleted scene shows Selena, Mark and Hannah taking turns driving his black cab and doing their best London cabbie impersonation, much to his annoyance. The DVD Commentary mentions that you can't drive a black cab without experiencing an irresistible urge to do this.
Dyeing For Your Art: The actors playing soldiers attended a three-day boot camp to ensure that they'd carry themselves properly.
Earn Your Happy Ending: The ending as released. Jim survives, all the main characters survive the mansion assault at the end, the infected begin to die off from starvation, and a passing jet sees their distress message laid out in the grass and radios in a rescue.
The ending is so upbeat, that Roger Ebert was actually hoping the jet at the end would open fire on them at the end to match the film's tone.
Extreme Melee Revenge: After the soldiers imprison and almost rape a woman and child, Jim beats the crap out of every soldier in the complex (aided by an unwitting zombie) and gouges out one's eyes with his thumbs.
Faux Symbolism: Jim's most harrowing moment of despair is when he dreams he's been abandoned.
Genre Savvy: Jim lampshades how driving into a darkened tunnel in a post-apocalyptic city inhabited mainly by psychotically insane carriers of a blood-transmitted rage disease is a really bad idea. This doesn't stop the others from doing it, however.
Ghost City: The first two-thirds of the film take place in a mostly-abandoned London.
Hazardous Water: Just one drop of infected blood is enough to turn anyone.
High Pressure Blood: The film incarnates the trope as Mailer. Is he vomiting? Is he bleeding from the mouth? He's literally gushing blood onto people. And he never runs out. Unluckily for them, The Virus spreads on contact with the eyes or mouth. It looks like they are trying to hold their breath while someone aims a firehose at their face.
Late to the Party: Jim after waking up in the hospital from his coma.
Looping Lines: According to the DVD Commentary, there were a lot of scenes where dialogue was added or altered in post. Some scenes were even shot with the intention of making the inevitable ADR easier (ie, the speaking character offscreen or in shadows).
Men Are the Expendable Gender: Of the two female characters in the movie none dies, while Jim is the sole male survivor of 28 Days Later. The fact that in the 'real ending' Jim dies and the girls still survive only rubs more salt in the wound.
Well, Jim's mother commits suicide to avoid infection, but she's a very minor character, to say the least.
However, there aren't that many women who are even in the movie. All the soldiers are men but then again any women who survived and joined the soldiers were probably tortured by Major West's men
The latter scenario is improbable; Major West and his men didn't want sex toys or victims, but wives to procreate with - they aren't interested in their consent, but they wouldn't treat them as disposable, either.
Subverted, however, when you consider the first infected human was a woman.
Also to Jim, for lighting a candle and thus alerting the zombies where he and the others were hiding.
Noble Shoplifter: After gamboling through a deserted greengrocer's, the heroes leave behind a credit card.
No FEMA Response: While society has pretty much entirely collapsed in Great Britain, the outbreak hasn't spread outside of the British Isles due to the very short period between infection and full on Rage. Granted, it has only been less than a month, and other governments may have still been trying to figure out how to help, assuming that their first aid missions weren't overrun or driven out by the spreading outbreak.
Nothing Is Scarier: One of the freakiest moments in the film is actually towards the beginning, when Jim wanders through a desolate and silent London.
The quiet but gradually climaxing song that plays in that scene? It is there because after about five minutes of abject silence, the car alarm almost killed the test audiences. Yes, they had to tone down the Nothing Is Scarier because of how well it worked.
Not a Zombie: Jim's first encounter with a zombie is a former priest. He is naturally reluctant to kill the zombie.
Not so Different: Jim's brutality during the climax was designed to draw parallels between the Rage virus and Jim's own intense rage towards the soldiers. It shows.
Officer and a Gentleman: Played with in Major West, who uses it to sucker in the women as sex toys for his men to keep up morale.
Doubles as Exact Words: the radio message in the film says the militia has "the answer to infection." But he never says that the "answer" is raping healthy women.
Frank's scene with the crow dripping blood into his eye, and immediately after. Heartwrenching as he realizes he has literally moments to tell his daughter how much he loves her, and has to push her away before the infection takes hold, for her own safety.
The dawning realization the characters have when Major West explains what exactly he meant by 'curing the infection'.
Only One Name: Most of the survivors, as well as the soldiers.
Only Sane Man: Among the soldiers, Sgt. Farrell. He's the only one of the soldiers who refuses to take part in West's plan to 'repopulate' the world, and is also the only one who's figured out that the rest of the world quarantining Britain (which is, after all, a relatively small island) is a lot more likely than these people being the last human beings on Earth.
Shout Out: (Literally) The manner in which Jim calls out for any survivors whilst leaving the hospital perfectly mirrors the way that Anthony Delio does with a microphone in Romero's Day of the Dead.
Also, Jim waking up in the hospital to find London abandoned mirrors the beginning of The Day of the Triffids.
Synthetic Plague: The Rage Virus, which was originally meant to soothe temperamental persons.
Technically Living Zombie: The Infected are a poster-child for this trope, and in many ways 28 Days Later started the wave of interest in this new "zombie" (really, Crazies). Anything that will kill a human can kill them, i.e. riddling their chest with bullets that are *not* expertly aimed. They've got a strong "mind-over-matter" adrenaline rush, though, so don't wait for them to get right on top of you. They're not smart enough to use weapons, and aren't explicitly trying to "eat" people (though they do animalistically bite people to attack). The real danger is that they'll easily infect you from close contact, what with all of their mucous membranes disintegrating into a bloody mess and puking up torrents of blood with little or no provocation.
All the survivors. Frank was just a simple taxi driver, and in his first appearance, is wearing badass riot gear and beats several infected to death.
Too Dumb to Live: Let's start with the scientists who decided to use chimpanzees, which are incredibly strong and can get pretty damn aggressive already, as guinea pigs for the Rage virus. Then the animal rights activists who release said infected chimpanzees after being warned that they're contagious. Additionally said scientists use a facility that doesn't even incorporate the most basic of quarantine procedures.
What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the poor goldfish, last seen in Frank and Hannah's flat? Presumably something bad.
Zombie Infectee: The Rage Virus is too fast acting for this to last long, but the man traveling with Selena is one, begging for his life despite being infected. The father averts this, knowing he's been infected and trying to get his daughter to stay away.
0 reviews