- Directed by Danny Boyle
- Written by Alex Garland
- Stars Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcDhdb6J3rM
Spoiler-free Judgment Zone
This was the movie that popularized the fast zombie idea. The basic premise is unique, showing the very start of the disaster then skipping ahead 28 Days Later as the title spells out. The cast, effects, and story are all excellent.
Spoilery Synopsis
We get video feeds of some crazy carnage and rioting. A monkey is strapped to a table, being forced to watch a dozen monitors of ultraviolence. Then the animal rights terrorists break in and release him and others like him. A scientist catches them in the act and warns that the chimps are infected and highly contagious. They’ve been infected with “Rage.” They release one ape, which soon bites one of the activists. Within a few seconds, everyone there is either dead or infected with the rage virus…
28 Days later, Jim wakes up in the hospital. He’s hooked to a bunch of machines; he’s been in a coma for a long time. He gets up and sees that the hospital is a mess. He goes outside and finds everything in London is deserted. He shouts repeatedly, but there’s apparently no one in the city. He finds a newspaper with the headline, “Evacuation!”
He goes into a church and finds hundreds of bodies. He says, “Hello” and finally comes across someone who isn’t dead; it’s a priest who jerks and staggers towards him. The priest is clearly violently insane, so Jim runs outside. Other infected people chase Jim, but suddenly there are people throwing fireballs at the infected; Jim goes with them.
They’re Selena and Mark, two surviving humans. Jim explains that he was in a bike accident and just woke up to all this. Selena tells about the virus that infected peoples’ blood. They tried to evacuate the cities, but it was too late. The army was overrun. There’s no government, no police, no army, no electricity.
They agree to go look for his almost-certainly-dead parents once the sun comes up. They get to Jim’s house easily enough, and they find his parents’ dead bodies; they took poison. Mark tells his story, and it wasn’t pretty. That night, Jim lights a candle, which invites an attack, but he’s not injured. Mark, on the other hand, gets a cut with blood in it; Selena hacks him to death immediately.
Selena says that if someone gets infected, you get ten to twenty seconds to kill them before they go berzerk. As it gets dark, they spot blinking Christmas lights way up in a skyrise window. They go to that building and a couple of infected chase them up the stairs. A man in riot gear stops the attackers. They meet Frank and his daughter Hannah. They live in an apartment in the skyscraper, which is easy to defend.
Frank seems nice, but he’s running out of supplies. They hear a voice on the radio claiming to be a safe place just north of London; it’s two or three days away. After a bit of debate, the four drive north. They break down in a tunnel and there are rats. The rats are running from the infected. They barely escape. Then they raid an untouched grocery store and continue on out of town.
They stop for gas, and Jim checks out inside, running into an infected child which he beats to death with a bat. A bit later, they stop at a farm for lunch. They decide to stay for the night, and Jim has nightmares.
They resume driving and pass Manchester, which is entirely burning. They stop at a military roadblock, but everyone is gone. This is where the radio signal told them to go, so now what? We see a crow eating a dead man’s remains up high. Frank looks up at it just as a single drop of blood falls and gets in his eye. It only takes a few seconds for him to become an infected maniac. Jim is about to swing the bat when soldiers shoot Frank full of holes.
Jim, Selena, and Hannah go with the soldiers. The soldiers take them to a compound where Major West is in charge. West is the one who’s been broadcasting on the radio, but this place isn’t what any of them had hoped for. At least it’s safe– the whole compound is surrounded by landmines and snipers. Jim sees right off that these soldiers aren’t strictly the disciplined type he was expecting. West even has an infected as a prisoner; he’s waiting to see how long it takes for them to starve to death.
They all sit down for a feast, but the eggs are rotten. Everyone talks, and it’s all pretty depressing stuff. Suddenly, a landmine goes off and a siren blares. There’s a one-sided battle that the soldiers quickly win. One of the soldiers gets all cocky with Serena and is disciplined by the sergeant. Major West and Jim talk about who’ve they killed in the past. West’s men were without any hope so he promised he would provide women. That’s what the broadcast was about. And there’s a woman in the place now. Or two actually. Eww.
Jim runs to get Selena and Hannah out of the place, but he’s knocked out by one of the soldiers. Jim gets handcuffed to a radiator along with the sergeant. The two are released and then led out into the woods, where somehow Jim gets away. He falls down and watches the contrail of an airplane flying way up in the sky.
The soldiers start having their way with Selena and Hannah. They get a minute alone and Selena gives Hannah a handful of pills, but a soldier stops them before Hannah can take more than a few. A siren goes off, and the soldiers stop what they’re doing to investigate at the big roadblock. Jim kills one of the soldiers, and Major West runs into the woods after him.
Jim returns to the soldiers’ compound and releases Jones, the infected prisoner. He infects another, and things go downhill from there. Not only are there a growing number of injections in the building, but Jim is there too, and he’s not happy.
West returns and finds that things have gone bad in his absence. JIm and Selena are reunited but then Hannah comes in and whacks him over the head thinking he’s infected. It didn’t hurt too much though. The three run outside to the car, where they find West waiting. West shoots Jim, but Hannah finishes off West. They ram the gate on the way out.
28 more days later, Jim wakes up in a bed. The dead are finally dying of starvation. Selena and Hannah have made a huge cloth banner to signal the overflying airplane. This time, the plane sees them. Will they be rescued?
Commentary
This wasn’t the first film with fast zombies, but it was the first to really take off and popularize the idea. I wondered halfway through the film, what do these infected people eat? They’d have starved to death within a month, and these aren’t magically undead zombies. At least this idea was touched upon by Major West.
All the early wandering around in empty London sets the stage perfectly for later in the film. By having Jim wake up from a coma, they were able to bypass all the “virus spreading” part of the plot. The music really stands out as well, it really sets the mood for each scene.
The ending takes a bit of time to set up, but it’s very tense, and you don’t really know if any of them will survive.