28 Days Later ( film)
28 Days Later
28 Days Later is a 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Danny Boyle and starring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris and Christopher Eccleston. Set in Great Britain, just after the turn of the 21st century, the story depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious virus and focuses upon the struggle of four survivors to cope with the ruination of the life they once knew.
A critical and commercial success, the film is widely recognized for images of a deserted London, and was shot almost entirely on digital video. The film spawned the 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, as well as the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath.
Cast
Alex Palmer - Activist
Bindu De Stoppani - Activist
Jukka
Hiltunen - Activist
David Schneider - Scientist
Cillian
Murphy - Jim
Toby Sedgwick - Infected Priest
Naomie Harris - Selena
Noah Huntley - Mark
Christopher Dunne
- Jim's Father
Emma Hitching - Jim's Mother
Alexander Delamere - Mr.
Bridges
Kim McGarrity - Mr. Bridges' Daughter
Brendan
Gleeson - Frank
Megan Burns - Hannah
Justin Hackney - Infected Kid
Luke Mably - Private Clifton
Stuart McQuarrie - Sergeant Farrell
Ricci
Harnett - Corporal Mitchell
Leo Bill - Private Jones
Junior Laniyan
- Private Bell
Ray Panthaki - Private Bedford
Christopher Eccleston - Major Henry West
Sanjay Rambaruth - Private Davis
Marvin Campbell - Private Mailer
Adrian Christopher - Featured Infected
Richard Dwyer - Featured Infected
Nick Ewans - Featured Infected
Terry John - Featured Infected
Paul Kasey - Featured Infected
Sebastian Knapp - Featured Infected
Nicholas James Lewis - Featured Infected
Jenni Lush - Featured Infected
Tristan Matthiae - Featured Infected
Jeffrey Rann - Featured Infected (as Jeff Rann)
Joelle Simpson - Featured
Infected
Al Stokes - Featured Infected
Steen Young - Featured Infected
28 Days Later: The Soundtrack Album
Soundtrack
by John Murphy, Various Artists
Released June 17, 2003
Recorded 2002
Length
45:03
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link
Danny Boyle film
soundtrack chronology
The Beach
(2000) 28 Days Later
(2002) Millions
(2004)
28 Days Later: The Soundtrack Album is the accompanying soundtrack to
the 2002 film 28 Days Later. It was released on June 17, 2003. The original score
was composed by John Murphy, and tracks from Brian Eno, Grandaddy and Blue States
which featured in the movie also appear on the album. An edited version of East
Hastings by Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor appeared in the
movie but not on the soundtrack album.
Track listing
All tracks performed
by John Murphy unless otherwise stated.
"The Beginning" 2:56
"Rage"
1:22
"The Church" 1:16
"Jim's Parents" (Abide With
Me) 2:29
"Then There Were 2" 0:42
"Tower Block" 1:26
"Taxi" (Ave Maria) 2:08
"The Tunnel" 1:39
"A.M.
180" (performed by Grandaddy) 3:20
"An Ending (Ascent)" (performed
by Brian Eno) 4:17
"No More Films" 0:48
"Jim's Dream"
0:40
"In Paradisum" (Faure's Requiem in D minor) 2:11
"Frank's
Death" - Soldiers (Mozart's Requiem in D minor) 2:39
"I Promised
Them Women" 1:24
"The Search For Jim" 2:41
"Red Dresses"
0:48
"In The House - In A Heartbeat" 4:16
"The End"
1:55
"Season Song" (performed by Blue States) 4:12
"End
Credits" 1:46
Plot
Late one night, British animal rights activists
break into a science laboratory to free chimpanzees being used for medical research.
Disregarding the warnings of the local scientist, the activists ultimately free
the Rage virus subjects, which attack and infect the activists and scientist.
Twenty-eight days later, a bicycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens
from a coma in a deserted hospital. As he leaves the hospital, he discovers London
is completely deserted and rife with signs of catastrophe. Jim is soon discovered
and chased through the streets by infected people before being rescued by two
survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley), who rush him to their
hideout in the London Underground. They reveal that while Jim was comatose, the
virus spread uncontrollably among the populace, turning most people into vicious
monsters ("the Infected") and resulting in societal collapse, possibly
on a global scale.
Selena and Mark accompany Jim to his parents' house, where he discovers that his parents committed suicide. That night, several Infected attack the survivors, and when the fight ends Mark is bleeding. Selena immediately hacks him to death with a machete, explaining to Jim that infection is spread through the blood and overwhelms its victims in seconds, rendering them deadly to others. She warns that should he become infected, she will kill him "in a heartbeat." As the two journey through the derelict city the next day, Selena rules out intimacy between her and Jim, declaring that only the fight for survival remains. They discover two more survivors, Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns), holed up in an abandoned apartment tower. Invited to spend the night, Selena and Jim privately debate whether they should remain with Frank and Hannah. Jim says they seem like good people, while Selena fears they will slow her down, warning Jim that putting others ahead of one's own personal survival is a sure way to get killed.
The next morning, Frank informs Jim and Selena that supplies, particularly water, are dwindling, and shows them a prerecorded radio broadcast loop transmitted by soldiers near Manchester who claim to have "the answer to infection." The survivors board Frank's cab in search of the blockade and during the trip bond with one another. Selena's steely resolve begins to soften, while Jim's experiences on the trip begin to toughen him up. When the four reach the deserted blockade, Frank is infected by blood from a dripping corpse and is immediately shot by hiding soldiers, who then commandeer the cab and take Selena, Jim and Hannah to a fortified mansion under the command of Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston). As Hannah goes into shock, Selena and Jim reach out to each other romantically. Jim discovers that West's "answer to infection" involves waiting for the Infected to starve to death, while giving hope for community survival by forcing sexual servitude on the female survivors. Shocked, Jim attempts to escape with Selena and Hannah, but is captured by the soldiers, along with Sergeant Farrell (Stuart McQuarrie), who disagrees with the Major's plan. While Jim and Farrell are imprisoned for the night, Farrell theorises that there is no worldwide epidemic, but rather that the island of Great Britain has been quarantined.
Selena (Naomie
Harris) and Jim (Cillian Murphy) reunitedThe next day, as two soldiers lead the
prisoners into the woods to be executed, Selena and Hannah are trapped as the
soldiers circle, wanting to begin the rapes. While the two executioners fight
about how to kill Farrell, Jim escapes over a wall. He observes the contrails
of a jet aircraft flying high overhead and realizes that someone in the outside
world is still functioning. After luring West and one of his men to the blockade,
Jim runs back to the soldiers' headquarters where he unleashes Mailer, an infected
soldier that West kept chained outside for observation. Mailer attacks the soldiers
in the mansion, while Jim stealthily skulks around, killing a soldier and manuevering
around the growing number of Infected. Selena, held hostage by the last uninfected
soldier, is horrified when Jim, covered in blood, bursts into the room and savagely
kills the soldier, leading her to believe that he may be infected. Raising her
machete, she hesitates before striking; he quips, "That was longer than a
heartbeat," and the two kiss passionately. Hannah finds them and the trio
run to Frank's cab, only to encounter West, who shoots Jim in the stomach. Hannah
commandeers the cab and throws West to the infected Mailer, then escapes with
Jim and Selena.
Selena and Hannah rush Jim into a deserted hospital, where Selena performs life-saving emergency procedures. Twenty-eight days later, a bandaged Jim is shown waking up in recovery again, this time on one side of a double bed in a remote cottage. Downstairs, he finds Selena sewing large swaths of fabric when Hannah appears. The three rush outside and unfurl a huge cloth banner, adding the final letter to the word "HELLO" laid out on the meadow. As the approaching jet flies over the landscape, the Infected lie in the streets dying of starvation. After the jet zooms past the three waving survivors and their distress sign, Selena wonders aloud, "Do you think he saw us this time?"
Alternative endings
The DVD extras include three alternative endings, all of
which end with Jim dying. Two were filmed, while the third, a more radical departure,
was only storyboarded.
Jim dies at the hospital
In this ending,
after Jim is shot, Selena and Hannah still rush him to the deserted hospital,
but the scene is extended. Selena, with Hannah's assistance, attempts to perform
life-saving procedures but cannot revive Jim. Selena is heartbroken, and Hannah,
distraught, looks to her for guidance. Selena tells Hannah that they will go on;
they pick up their guns and walk away from Jim's lifeless body. Selena and Hannah,
fully armed, walk through the operating room doors, which gradually stop swinging.
On the DVD commentary, Boyle and Garland explain that this was the original ending of the film's first cut, which was tested with preview audiences. It was ultimately rejected for seeming too bleak; the final exit from the hospital was intended to imply Selena and Hannah's survival, whereas test audiences felt that the women were marching off to certain death. Boyle and Garland express a preference for this alternate ending, calling it the "true ending". They comment that this ending brought Jim full circle, as he starts and finishes the story in bed in a deserted hospital.
This ending was added in the theatrical release of the film beginning on 25 July 2003, placed after the credits and prefaced with the words "-what if."[citation needed] The ending appears on some television broadcasts of the movie, such as those on Channel 4.[citation needed]
Rescue coda without Jim
This ending, for which only a rough edit was completed,
is an alternate version of the potential rescue sequence shown at the very end
of the released film. Here, the scenes are identical, except that this ending
was intended to be placed after the first alternative ending where Jim dies, so
he is absent. When Selena is sewing one of the banner letters in the cottage,
she is seen facetiously talking to a chicken instead of Jim. Only Selena and Hannah
are seen waving to the jet flying overhead in the final shots.
"Radical
Alternative Ending"
The "Radical Alternative Ending" was not
filmed and is presented on the DVD as a series of illustrated storyboards with
voiceovers by Boyle and Garland. This ending would have taken the story in a radically
different direction from the film's midpoint. When Frank is infected at the military
blockade near Manchester, the soldiers do not enter the story. Instead, Jim, Selena
and Hannah are somehow able to restrain the infected Frank, hoping they will find
a cure for the virus nearby as suggested in the radio broadcast. They soon discover
that the blockade had protected a large medical research complex, the same one
featured in the first scene of the film where the virus was developed.
Inside, the party is relieved to find a scientist self-barricaded inside a room with food and water. He won't open the door because he fears they will take his food, although he does admit that the "answer to infection is here." Unfortunately, he refuses to talk further because he doesn't want to make an emotional attachment to people who will soon be dead. After hours of failed attempts to break through the door or coax the man out, Jim eventually brings Hannah to the door and explains Frank's situation. The scientist reluctantly tells them that Frank can only be cured with a complete blood transfusion, and supplies them with the necessary equipment. After learning that he is the only match with Frank's blood type, Jim nobly sacrifices himself so that Frank can survive with his daughter. Just as his journey began, Jim is left alone in the abandoned medical facility, and Selena, Hannah and Frank move into the room with the scientist as a horde of the infected breach the complex. Strapped to the table as the chimp had been in the opening scene, the computer monitors showing death and destruction come to life around a thrashing, infected Jim.
Garland and Boyle explain that they conceptualised this ending to see what the film would be like if they did not expand the focus beyond the core four survivors. They ultimately decided against it because the idea of a total blood replacement as a cure was not credible.
Parodies
The
film has inspired a number of spoofs:
Comedy short film 48 Hours Later (2003)
follows the same plot of a man waking to a plague-infested world.
Malaysian
comedy short 28 Hours Later (2005) relocates the basic plot of 28 Days Later to
Kuala Lumpur.
"Team Tiger Awesome" created a series of videos called
28 Day Slater. Whilst the title is clearly a play on 28 Days Later, the plots
actually parody Saved by the Bell and feature a fictional representation of Mario
Lopez, who believes that he is Slater, his character from Saved by the Bell, during
the month of February (a 28-day month).
Another comedy short filmed by Galacticast
called "28 Seconds Later" involves a montage of events happening between
28 second pauses.
At the conclusion of the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead, a
comedy that sends up the zombie film genre, a television broadcaster (voiced by
the film's director) can be heard stating that "-initial reports that the
virus was caused by rage infected monkeys has now been dismissed as complete bullshit".
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