Sartre famously wrote that “hell is other people”, and while it can be easy to sympathize with that statement, I think there’s more than one kind of hell. Despite a certain melancholic beauty in solitude, the fear of being alone is both primal and common enough that most people have nightmares about it at one time or another, so it makes sense that it’s a recurring theme in the horror genre.
And when it comes to horrific depictions of solitude, I’d say that my absolute favorite would have to be Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s apocalyptic masterpiece, 28 Days Later. Not only does the film contain a hauntingly memorable portrayal of a lifeless England, but it also explores our need for human contact even in a world where violence can erupt in a mere heartbeat. Now that the movie is celebrating two decades of terror and we’ve lived through the horrors of a real pandemic, I think it’s the perfect time to discuss how the film remains an influential classic even after so much media has borrowed from it.
For the unfortunate few who haven’t seen it, 28 Days Later stars Cillian Murphy as Jim, a young man who awakens from a coma and finds himself on the run from homicidal infected in a post-apocalyptic London. Joining forces with Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley), Jim learns that there’s been an outbreak of the highly contagious “Rage” virus, which led to the collapse of civilization. The film then chronicles the group’s attempts to survive and find meaning in this grim new world.
Appropriately enough, it was Capcom’s original Resident Evil that rekindled Garland’s love affair with zombies and led to his screenplay. The writer has explained that the game made him realize that the undead had been absent from mainstream media for quite a while, making him long for the days of Romero’s Dead trilogy. Couple that sentiment with some inspiration from John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and you get the basis for the story that would become 28 Days Later.
Of course, you couldn’t just bring traditional zombies into the 21st century. The shambling ghouls of Romero and Dan O’Bannon were originally influenced by period-sensitive fears like the red scare and even the rise of nuclear power, so Garland decided to update the creatures by borrowing from more recent anxieties like terrorist attacks and disease outbreaks. This modernized take also led to the film’s ground-breaking introduction of running zombies in popular culture.
“Staying alive’s as good as it gets.”
While this detail may not seem all that impressive after 20 years of athletic flesh-eaters, it’s only because of the sheer number of movies, games and TV shows directly influenced by Boyle’s film. From Left 4 Dead to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, there’s no shortage of creators openly admitting to being inspired by Boyle and Garland’s nightmarish re-imagining of this classic monster. The film also marked the beginning of a generalized revival of zombies in media, leading the charge alongside the Resident Evil movies and paving the way for Romero himself to revisit the Dead franchise during the 2000s.
While there’s no denying the effect that that 28 Days Later had on zombie media over the years, there’s still an ongoing debate about whether or not it’s an actual zombie flick. The director and screenwriter have taken opposite sides of the argument, with Boyle vehemently disagreeing with the zombie label and attempting to distance the film from the genre during interviews. Garland, on the other hand, insists that it’s clearly a zombie flick despite any technical discrepancies due to the nature of the Rage virus.
Regardless, the horror of 28 Days Later goes far beyond the murderous infected, with Boyle pulling from real world fears when constructing the film’s visual vocabulary of apocalyptic terror. Imagery like the rotting corpses piled up in churches, ominous graffiti and missing person fliers were inspired by records of real tragedies in places like Rwanda and Cambodia, with the director wanting to make the experience as true to life as possible without actually using footage from these real world horrors. This attention to detail actually led to several shocking moments that directly mirrored the 9/11 attacks despite most of the movie having already been shot before the incident.
The film certainly captured the early 2000s zeitgeist, but it’s also become even more poignant after a real pandemic. Sure, we didn’t have to deal with free-running flesh-eaters these past few years, but the film’s themes of living in constant fear of infection and finding comfort in each other amid an apocalyptic crisis hit much closer to home after living through a real state of emergency.
This was actually the very first film I watched during lockdown, which was eerily appropriate as internet users were quick to compare the empty streets of covid-ravaged London with the East Hastings sequence in 28 Days Later. Watching Murphy wander the silent cityscape took on a whole new meaning in 2020, with these images of a viral rapture feeling a lot less like genre fiction. This is especially true when you consider the movie’s naturalistic visuals.
“And then it wasn’t on the TV any more. It was in the street outside. It was coming in through your windows. It was a virus. An infection.”
Some viewers might find the lo-fi camerawork a little off-putting, especially now that we’re used to 4K and beyond, but I’d argue that Anthony Dod Mantle’s grimy photography is precisely what makes the film a nightmarish exercise in digital art. The low resolution is used to terrifying effect during night scenes, and some of the landscape shots make the blurred pixels look like digital brushstrokes.
Boyle apparently chose to shoot the film on consumer-grade DV cameras as a way of emulating the down-to-earth feel he was going for, likening the production to shooting as if the crew were survivors in an apocalyptic wasteland. The unorthodox equipment also facilitated the iconic shots of an empty London, allowing for quick camera setups that would be virtually impossible through traditional means.
These haunting visuals are also accompanied by a memorable soundtrack featuring both licensed tunes by bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Blue States, as well as original music by the legendary John Murphy. The In the House – In a Heartbeat track has become particularly infamous after showing up in countless trailers and even other movies, adding to the film’s ever-expanding legacy.
With all due respect to Danny Boyle, I believe that 28 Days Later is the absolute best zombie flick since Romero’s original Dead trilogy. Not only is it still a memorable scare-fest, but its human elements have aged like a fine wine over the years. To me, the most compelling moment of the film is the scene where Jim simply looks up and sees an airplane flying by, silently implying that there’s still hope out there. After everything we’ve seen these past couple of years, I think there’s something to be said for genuinely uplifting moments hidden in horrific experiences, and that’s why the film is still worth watching two decades later.
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