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28 Days Later
Directed by Danny Boyle
Produced by Andrew Macdonald
Written by Alex Garland
Starring Cillian Murphy
Naomie Harris
Brendan Gleeson
Christopher Eccleston
Megan Burns
Music by John Murphy
Cinematography Anthony Dod Mantle
Editing by Chris Gill
Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s) 1 November 2002 (UK)
27 June 2003 (U.S.)
Running time 113 min.
Country
United Kingdom
Language English
Budget £5,000,000
Gross revenue $82,719,885 (Worldwide)
Followed by 28 Weeks Later
Official website • IMDb • Allmovie
28 Days Later is a 2002 British post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Danny Boyle. With a screenplay written by Alex Garland, the film stars Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley, Brendan Gleeson 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. This film was rated 18 in Britain for very strong language, violence and horror.
A critical and commercial success, the film is widely recognised 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.
Plot
Late one night, British animal rights activists break into the Cambridge Primate Research Facility to free chimpanzees being used for medical research. The local scientist warns the activists that the chimps are infected with what he calls a "rage virus," but the activists disregard him and set one chimp free. It immediately attacks and infects the activists and scientist.
28 days later, a bicycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma naked 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 during Jim's coma from a car accident, the country began to experience mass rioting, mainly in small villages and market towns, which then began to occur in larger towns and eventually the cities. They also reveal the rioting was caused by an infection, which causes a person to become mindless and kill and maim every living thing around them. The government reacted too late to evacuate the cities and by that point it was a matter of just fighting for survival. They tell Jim he's the first person they have seen without infection for 6 days, meaning the infection spread extremely quickly during those 28 days.
Selena and Mark accompany Jim to his parents' house, where he discovers that they committed suicide by means of a drug overdose. That night, two of the Infected attack the survivors, and when the fight ends they discover that Mark is injured and is likely infected. Selena immediately kills him with her 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 block of flats. 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 recorded 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 dripping from an infected body and is immediately shot by hidden 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 grieves, 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 caught 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.
The next day, as two soldiers lead the prisoners into the woods to be executed, Selena and Hannah are trapped by the soldiers. 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 manoeuvring around the growing number of Infected. Selena, held hostage by the last uninfected soldier, fears that Jim may have been infected, watches him savagely beat the soldier to death and hesitantly prepares to attack him; Jim 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. Hannah commandeers the cab and backs it up to the front door, where the infected Mailer pulls West though the rear window and drags him screaming into the house. The three then escape as Mailer shrieks into the night.
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 an approaching military jet flies over the landscape, a pair of the infected are shown lying helplessly by the road, 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 25th July 2003, placed after the credits and prefaced with the words "what if..."[1]
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. As Boyle said in the DVD commentary, it "didn't make much sense" since the film had already established that one drop of blood can infect a person. "What would we do? Drain him of blood and scrub his veins with bleach?"
Cast
On the DVD, director Boyle explains that, with the aim of preserving the suspension of disbelief, relatively unknown actors were cast in the film. Male lead Cillian Murphy had at the time starred primarily in small independent films, while female lead Naomie Harris had acted on British television as a child. However, actors Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson were somewhat well-known character actors. Eccleston, who went on to greater fame for his portrayal of the Ninth Doctor in the 2005 series of Doctor Who, had already appeared in films such as The Others, Gone in 60 Seconds, eXistenZ and Shallow Grave (another film directed by Boyle). Likewise, Gleeson had appeared in several films, including Braveheart, Lake Placid and The General.
Actor RoleCillian Murphy Jim
Naomie Harris Selena
Christopher Eccleston Major Henry West
Brendan Gleeson Frank
Megan Burns Hannah
Noah Huntley Mark
Stuart McQuarrie Sergeant Farrell
Ricci Harnett Corporal Mitchell
Luke Mably Private Clifton
Leo Bill Private Jones
Junior Laniyan Private Bell
Ray Panthaki Private Bedford
Sanjay Rambaruth Private Davis
Marvin Campbell Private Mailer