‘Repent, The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh…’
Zombie films haven’t changed much over the years. Sure, the voodoo mind control of White Zombie, widely regarded as the first zombie film, is a million miles away from the shuffling army of the undead presented in George A. Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. But the latter film set the blueprint that almost all zombie films would follow from that point onwards: reanimated corpses obsessed with eating brains roaming the earth in various states of decay. Romero himself returned to the stagnant well of the zombie movie on numerous occasions, most notably with 1978’s genre-defining Dawn of the Dead. This sparked the first golden age of zombie films with Zombie Flesh Eaters, Re-Animator, and The Return of the Living Dead, all cultural touchstones for the genre that wouldn’t die.
However, as the ‘80s rolled into the ‘90s, the moribund shuffle of the zombie movie ground to a halt entirely. Peter Jackson’s horror-comedy Braindead was perhaps the final film of the golden era before a long barren period in the ‘90s began. Unsurprisingly, offerings such as Return of the Living Dead 3, Weekend at Bernie’s II, and Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island did not provide the shot in the arm required to bring zombie movies back from the dead. Fortunately, it all changed in 2002 with director Danny Boyle and his low-budget zombie classic 28 Days Later…
28 Days Later follows Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to find London deserted. Little did the cast and crew know that the scenes in which Jim glances at huge notice boards filled with missing posters would take on an eerie prescience following 9/11. After encountering the infected for the first time, Jim teams up with Selena (Naomie Harris), a chemist and battle-hardened survivor, taxi driver Frank (Brendan Gleeson), and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) as the unlikely quartet attempt to reach safety.
Firstly, let me address the rotting and undead elephant in the room. 28 Days Later isn’t technically a zombie movie. The ‘infected’ (to use the movie’s parlance) don’t die and come back to life. Instead, they are infected with the rage virus, which turns them into murderous lunatics who exist only to infect others. For my money, however, they are still zombies. No autonomy… check. A group mentality… check. Loss of identity… check, check, and check.
Now, cast your mind back to September 2001. The world is about to change forever. But for writer Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle, shooting has begun on 28 Days Later. Inspired by Romero’s films, the massive popularity of the iconic video game Resident Evil (released five years earlier in 1996), and classic, post-apocalyptic horror fiction such as Day of the Triffids, Garland wrote the screenplay and handed it to Boyle (whom he had worked with on The Beach a couple of years earlier) and the two agreed to collaborate.
The horror genre was in a strange place in 2001. The glut of post-Scream teen slashers was about to make way for torture porn and found footage movies. The big horror hits of the era included titles as diverse as Jeepers Creepers, The Others, and Thir13en Ghosts. It was in this uneasy landscape that 28 Days Later was born. It wasn’t just the zombie subgenre that needed to be revitalized. Horror itself was undergoing an existential crisis. When Scary Movie 2 is one of the year’s most successful ‘horror’ films, you know the genre is in trouble. The horror landscape was ready for something new.
As is common in zombie films, the man is the biggest monster of all. Here, he is personified by Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston), the leader of a group of renegade soldiers. The end product is an exquisite dance of death that culminates in a terrifying rampage of violence – all soundtracked by John Murphy’s haunting and memorable score.
While 28 Days Later explored many of the same themes as the zombie films that came before it, several key differences set Boyle’s masterpiece aside from the rest. The scenes of a desolate and empty central London have become iconic and acted as a grim precursor to similar scenes during the COVID crisis. As Jim, Murphy offered a glimpse of the craft and intensity that would lead to him becoming a bona fide movie and TV star due to his work in the BBC production Peaky Blinders and various film projects with Christopher Nolan.
Naomie Harris, too, introduced herself to the world with this role, leading to a slew of prestigious TV jobs and film roles. Boyle’s reliance on practical effects and propulsive pacing give 28 Days Later a timelessness that has ensured that the film has not only endured but become more beloved in the 20 years since its release. But the infected themselves may be the most revolutionary aspect of 28 Days Later. Rather than ponderously shuffling toward their victims, these zombies run flat out while screaming and slobbering. In the hands of Boyle, the infected attack like rabid dogs, inexorable and relentless. And boy, is it terrifying. While this change feels like a fairly arbitrary concept – zombies running instead of walking – this small change revolutionised the zombie genre.
28 Days Later is a groundbreaking zombie film and a classic horror film. It is also a film that changed the face of pop culture forever. Without 28 Days Later, there would be no second golden age of the zombie film. Its influence is so vast and far-reaching that by the time the belated sequel 28 Weeks Later was released in 2007, the world had moved on to different zombies in different cinematic universes. With 28 Years Later on the horizon, perhaps the time has come for the zombie to be reinvented yet again.
