Line #31 NightmareFuel/TwentyEightDaysLater


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4	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/28_days_later_zombie.jpg]]
5	[[caption-width-right:350:RedEyesTakeWarning.]]
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7	With the combined efforts of Creator/DannyBoyle (director), Creator/AlexGarland (writer), and Andrew Macdonald (producer), ''28 Days Later'' provides one hell of a scare-fest through and through.
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10	* The very concept of infection. Can occur in as little as 10-20 seconds and requires only a small droplet of infected blood.
11	** This on top of spending 10-20 seconds being brutally beaten to death by an infected person before you join them.
12	** Or having a motorcycle helmet or something on, keeping you from being infected until your skin has been torn apart by the force of their blows.
13	** Guess what? You just swallowed a drop of infected blood! Now you have ten seconds to live before you become a mindless zombie unless one of your friends hacks you into pieces with a machete. While your mind is still intact and you are fully aware of it.
14	** Say you don't get outright attacked? Well, just getting infected is ''extremely'' painful all by itself. So you get to spend your final moments screaming and/or convulsing no matter what!
15	* The whole sequence where Jim wakes up and finds London deserted and destroyed is a potent dose of NightmareFuel in and of itself. Waking out of a coma to something like that, with absolutely no idea what's going on...brrr.
16	** The London sections are made so much worse if you live in and around the city. Seeing streets and buildings you know just abandoned or full of pseudo-zombies is really un-nerving.
17	* When Jim goes into the church he passes a huge part of graffiti saying [[TheEndIsNigh 'THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH']] and finds the entire floor of the church ''covered in corpses.'' When he softly says "hello", two of them bolt upright and... just ''stare'' at him, with gaping mouths and vacant eyes.
18	* The diner scene. The entire room is full of rotting corpses, including the mother holding onto her baby. With each passing second, Jim himself realizes it wasn't just stupid to get inside, but he will probably never be able to wipe that image from his memory now.
19	** And then the infected boy attacks him, uttering the only line spoken by infected and forcing Jim to bash his head open, despite being relatively easily subdued. The single line said by him and his general defenseless makes the kill all that more impactful.
20	*** Another Terrifying possibility due to this scene, Children aren't as naturally attuned to rage as adults, and even less to to the concept of murderous rage, the Child being able to speak may be due to his age meaning he just can't summon up the actual rage the virus is trying to induce, unlike adults who turn into berserkers children are just in constant temper tantrum mode.
21	* Mailer. Particularly in the shot where one of the soldiers looks out the window and finds Mailer staring right back in at him. And then he ''bursts'' through the window and pins said soldier to the ground, spewing infected blood all over his face and infecting him.
22	* Those soldiers. There's one scene where Hannah and Selena are sitting on a small couch, terrified, being slowly circled by a bunch of rapist soldiers who are probably mentally drawing straws to see who goes first...and they dressed the girls in ball dresses. It's bad enough that they're tricking desperate women into being their {{sex slave}}s, but they're also trying to pretty them up first. Why would they add that extra disturbing dimension to what already is a disgusting horror?
23	** Sadly related, the scene where Selena is desperately feeding Hannah as much Valium as she can 'so she won't care'.
24	** The reasoning only adds to the horror: They're trying to desperately imagine some sense of civility to it. Remember the original reason that West promised them women: not for sexual release, but for children. For some sense of a future.
25	*** Made more horrifying by the fact that one can see how this would happen. As far as they knew they were the only living humans in Britain. It's not implausible that nine men, having seen the initial effects of the outbreak and then been holed up with each other for a month, might start to lose it.
26	*** The ''real'' nightmare is the realization it took them ''only a month'' to reach that state, from what was passable and adjusted to preparing a gang rape of a girl that can barely be even called a teenager. Though the fact that all the threats are directed at Selena might suggest [[EveryoneHasStandards even they weren't actually willing]] to go ''that'' far.
27	* Don't mess with Jim. He'll [[EyeScream gouge your eyes out. With his thumbs]].
28	* "In the House - In a Heartbeat". The alternating piano notes, the guitar chords, over and over again...an ear worm made of NightmareFuel.
29	* When Frank is infected and urges Hannah to stay away.
30	** Frank's infection in general, and its implications about the Rage virus. The body had clearly been there for awhile. His only exposure was a single drop of infected blood in his eye. And the virus ''still'' takes effect within 30 seconds. Exactly how long can this thing survive without a living host?
31	* The Rage infectees slowly dying of starvation.
32	* The fate of the chimpanzee(s). Taken against their will to be used in a hideous experiment, most likely one to help create super soldiers.
33	** Patient zero herself; she's immediately reduced to writhing on the ground, screaming that she's "burning", before accidentally spitting blood at one of her friends, infecting ''him''. By the time the scientist comes back in to kill her, the other infected activist is gone, she's already killed the remaining activist, [[DeathGlare and then she turns around to face him]]...
34	*** [[http://www.nolody.com/73db/filmtv/28dl_1.jpg Here's an image.]]
35	** Pretty unlikely that the goal of the research project was "super soldiers." A soldier who cannot be controlled, trained, or use tools is pretty useless. There are two much more plausible reasons for the research into the "Rage virus:"
36	*** Psychology Research - The causes of particular behaviors are still not universally known, understood, and accepted. The purpose of the research may have been to determine the causes and neural structures involved in anger disinhibition to potentially create treatments or cures for people with anger management issues, psychopathy, or sociopathy. Since the easiest way to trace the source of a malfunction is to turn it up to eleven, the Rage virus may have been a simple diagnostic tool to help researchers home in on what they needed to find.
37	*** Weaponization - Far more likely, the Rage virus could have been under development for use as a weapon. While useless to improve one's own troops, dropping it on an enemy and letting him wipe himself out has always been attractive to military research. Of course, the problem with a weapon like this is that once it's off its chain, getting it back under control is a problem. So, before it could be properly militarized, it would need a reliable cure. Thus, the research being conducted was Part 2 of the program: finding a way to put the weapon on a leash.
38	*** It was actually explained that the Rage virus was an experiment that went horrifyingly wrong, what they were actually trying to make was a rage ''inhibitor'' for use on more violent prisoners and the like, but something went wrong and instead of calming people down, it most definitely did the opposite, then the government tried to take a look at weaponizing it, and for added horror, the lab tech at the start? He ''purposely'' called the AnimalWrongsGroup to break the chimps out, knowing what was wrong with them.
39	* The Rage Virus itself is probably one of the most horrifying fictional viruses ever put to cinema. A bloodborne virus that turns anyone it infects into a feral, screaming, shadow of their former self within seconds, filled with intense rage, bloodlust and a desire to kill or infect anyone around them in any way that they possibly can.
40	** Plus the very notion of a plague that creates zombified killers by infecting people and making them very, very angry.
41	** To add more fear to the Rage Virus in comparison to ''any'' other "zombie" virus: The Infected don't want to eat you nor feast on your flesh: They just ''want to '''[[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown fucking kill you]]''' with any chance they got''. It is literally as the old saying of seeing a "red filter" over your eyes.
42	* The death of Mark. While he does have a wound on his arm and it's plausible infected blood got into it, the Rage virus also seems to take it's victims over very quickly. By contrast he shows no symptoms of infection for a good 30 seconds and even speaks in a calm and normal manner. Unfortunately, this is not enough to stop Selena brutally hacking him to death with a machete just in case.
43	* Selena's ApocalypticLog account of how the infection decimated the wholly-unprepared United Kingdom:-
44	->''"It started off as rioting. But right from the beginning you knew this was different, because it was happening in small villages, market towns... and then it wasn't on TV anymore. It was on the street outside. It was coming through your windows. It was a virus, an infection. You didn't need a doctor to tell you that. It was the blood, or something in the blood. By the time they tried to evacuate the cities, it was already too late. The infection was everywhere. The army blockades were overrun, and that's when the exodus started. The day before the TV and radio stopped broadcasting, there were reports of infection in Paris and New York. You didn't hear anything more after that."''

Context NightmareFuel / TwentyEightDaysLater