Whether it was the shocking imagery of a barren London in 2002, when the thought of totally empty cities felt unrealistic, or the brash, loud violence of it all: you likely remember where you were the first time you experienced 28 Days Later. It’s a film that feels utterly unique from the opening frame. A genuinely special movie that changed the genre and did so while battling the adversity of city councils, angry commuters, and even the fallout of 9/11. All leading to a genre-defining horror classic whose third upcoming sequel became the second most-watched YouTube trailer in movie history more than twenty years later. Hard to imagine for a movie that completely ran out of money before it even had an ending. This is what happened to 28 Days Later.
While we all know the story of 28 Days Later starts with careless activists who just wanted to set some damn monkeys free, the story of the script begins with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach. Writer Alex Garland’s novel had just been brought to life on screen by Trainspotting director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew MacDonald, and afterwards, the newcomer handed the pair a brand-new script: How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. Gotcha! 28 Days Later. Garland was a self-professed fan of the classic George Romero Night of the Living Dead films growing up and had that reawakened by playing the video game Resident Evil. While these are pretty obvious inspirations for a post-apocalyptic script, another less expected avenue provided heavy inspiration as well: the 1951 John Wyndham novel, The Day of the Triffids. In the novel, lead character Bill Masen wakes up in the hospital after having his eyes damaged by the poison of a triffid; a tall, fictional plant with the ability to murder human beings. While he was blinded by the incident, the rest of the area was subject to a meteor shower that blinded anyone who looked at the sky. He then walks around a London in complete chaos before befriending others and heading toward a light in the distance of an otherwise dark city. There, they meet with other survivors with plans to start a colony in the countryside before learning that those plans involve polygamy, and things get FUBAR fast. All the while, these giant mobile plants, which is a haunting thought if we’re being honest, are after them. There is much more than this to the story of The Day of the Triffids, but the similarities and inspirations are nonetheless fascinating.
Though Boyle wasn’t much of a zombie movie fan, he saw Garland’s script as a conduit to a story about rage. Andrew MacDonald simply found himself scared while reading it, which was enough for him to use some of his National Lottery funding to help bring the script to life. Universal Studios had first-look rights but passed, despite the talent involved and relatively low-risk budget, which you just know keeps some suit, somewhere, awake in the middle of the night.
To acquire the ever-unique look of 28 Days Later, Boyle reached out to (now frequent collaborator) Anthony Dod Mantle after being impressed with the camera operation on the film Festen. Mantle took a week to return the phone call, adorably thinking it had to just be his friends messing with him. Apart from casting the talented and well-known Brendan Gleeson as “big softy” Frank, Boyle set out to complete a cast of mostly newcomers and unknowns. He did this for two reasons: One, he smartly knew that it would add to the realism and fear of the situation if we didn’t recognize the faces on screen, something that worked in the casting of Robert Patrick as the T-1000 character in Terminator 2. Boyle also wanted you to have the immediate sense that everyone was dispensable. Secondly, he had a sneaking suspicion that no “really good actor” was going to want to be in a zombie film at the time; that these types of films mostly benefit those who aren’t superstars at the time.
Enter our lead, Cillian Murphy, as Jim, who, in-part thanks to his relatable performance in 28 Days Later, is very much a superstar today. Naomie Harris joined the project as the badass with well-rounded inner depth, Selena, and her career would skyrocket as well with memorable performances in films like Moonlight and as Moneypenny in future Bond films. The final member of their make-shift family went to Megan Burns as Hannah, who, later in life, fascinatingly went on to sign with Island Records as rock act Betty Curse. The downside to hiring inexperienced actors was just that, they were newish to acting. According to Anthony Dod Mantle, Boyle had to really work hard to get the performances out of Cillian and Naomie at the time. I’d say it’s quite clear they heeded his advice.
One of the most memorable things about 28 Days Later, apart from Jim waking up in a hospital FULLY ungroomed and penis out, is the utterly empty city around him. This was probably a little more shocking to see before the COVID pandemic took place, as we all lived through a far too similar situation together not long ago. At the time, however, it had been the tragedy of 9/11 that had given the film an all-too-realistic feel. 28 Days Later was already filming when the fateful day happened. Had it not been, it likely wouldn’t have green-lit at all. Often afterwards, stories like this were understandably avoided to keep from reminding viewers of the horrors of what they’d just witnessed. Blink-182, for instance, were filming their video for Stay Together for the Kids at the time of the tragedy. The video featured A Nightmare on Elm Street remake director Samuel Bayer ordering a wrecking ball to pulverize a building the band was playing inside of to symbolize a broken home of divorce. The imagery of buildings being torn down alone was enough for the video to be cancelled and re-shot. One of many tales of projects that never were because of their eerie similarities to real life events. Danny Boyle also credits this as being one of the reasons the film resonated so much at the time, with it being the first one out of the gate after 9/11 to recall how utterly vulnerable we all were, even in big cities.
The visual of Jim walking around an empty city with food, cars, and money abandoned all over the streets is an insanely thought-provoking premise to begin a story… but it wasn’t an easy shot to get. Something that Garland says amounted to maybe ten lines in the script would require them working with various members of city councils and officials to secure the impossible shots they needed. The crew would often have a time window of around forty-five minutes to secure many wide-scoping shots featuring known areas such as Westminster Bridge and Piccadilly Circus completely empty and covered in apocalypse. Meanwhile, that required shutting down popular roadways and understandably angering those on their way to work that morning. Boyle, ever the out-of-the-box thinker, strategically placed attractive and charming women in specific locations to help lessen tensions. The Sunshine director said that it was a tactical decision made simply because attractive women are much better at asking people to wait than men were. You don’t get films like this made without being a problem solver!
Those weren’t the only problems the crew would face, however. After having the art department cover Westminster Bridge in rubbish for their shot, of which they again had a small window to film, they spotted someone in a trolley cleaning up the bridge. Location Manager Pat Karum ran onto the bridge, clock ticking, and explained to the man he didn’t need to clean up and that they were filming. But he didn’t believe him.
Filming these scenes in London during what Boyle calls “those brittle hours between the last clubbers crawling home and you and me going to work” provided endless challenges. There was no way they would be able to achieve the shots needed using traditional camera procedures. Anthony Dod Mantle and Danny Boyle experimented with different solutions. They ultimately decided on using a Canon XL H1 to not only make these scenes work, but to give the film a “demonic atmosphere” by employing a frantic digital shutter and giving 28 Days Later its forever one-of-a-kind look and feel.
For their zombies cough excuse me, infected! INFECTED! Not trying to have my house toilet-papered… To play these people who have been highly contagious rage virus (get hit with a drop of blood in one spot and you’ve had it), athletes were often hired, for obvious reasons. Though not zombies, these infected provided the aesthetic of zombies that had been jacked up with copious amounts of pre-workout. This idea was born from Garland realizing, while playing the Resident Evil games, that the slow-moving zombies didn’t make the game scary but rather your lack of ammo in dealing with them. This led to some spirited stunt performances and unforgettable frights, such as the running hordes of infected during the flat-tire sequence. To create the look of the infected, they hired an on-set optometrist to put in red contact lenses said to be half the size of a table tennis ball. They based much of their design by going through a bevy of photographs detailing the different medical stages of rabies. Lovely breakfast conversation.
The set is full of stories of unconventional, punk rock, and DIY filmmaking in order to get the film made that’s palpable in the chaos on screen. At one point, when filming a gate crash scene, they realized a chain in the shot was deemed unsafe and could end up going through the car window. So, as art director David Bryan claims, someone on the set appeared ten minutes later with a chain made out of Haribo Gummy Bears molded together and sprayed with copper spray. And it worked. As another example, the very reason you see birds in the film (and prominently featured in the advertisements for 28 Years Later, I might add) is because they realized they obviously couldn’t control birds showing up in the area. So they decided on the spot to add them, deciding the virus didn’t kill them for whatever reason. There’s such an on-the-run, make-it-up-as-we-go aspect to 28 Days Later that feels like a beautiful miracle when placed together on screen. A beautiful miracle that almost wasn’t.
Money had always been an issue and a day came when Andrew MacDonald had to simply say they were done. There was no money left to finish the film. They had to stop filming at that exact moment and the crew literally had to pack up and leave with it unfinished and at the point where they crash into the gates after Jim has been shot. You can literally see the film freeze-frame on their faces in the car in the moment, whether that is intentional or not.
Somehow, some way they ended up shooting not just one ending… but several. Garland wrote an end where Jim dies of his wounds as Selena tries to save him in an abandoned hospital. In one version of this, there is an ultra-weird insight into Jim’s mind as he is dying where he relives being hit by a car while working as a bike courier. It kind of feels like a bad Radiohead music video from the 90s and, regardless, Jim dying tested horribly with audiences. I’d have to say I agree. Another ending, storyboarded but never filmed, never featured the soldier storyline at all. It instead had the foursome attempting to save Frank, ending with Jim offering his life to give him a full blood transfusion. This before the two realized the science of this ending just didn’t make sense. All these endings are available in some form or fashion both online and on the home media special features.
Of course, you can’t speak of the success of 28 Days Later without the score of John Murphy, and specifically “In the House – In a Heartbeat,” which plays as Jim finally hits fuck-it on those pervy soldiers in the rain. It’s a great track to write or study to, I might add. Hell, I could brush my teeth to it and still feel kind of badass.
As we already know, 28 Days Later released in 2002 and is a massive success story. The film and its modest budget of around $8 million turned out to be a surprise hit in America, which helped catapult it to earning around $85 million worldwide. Suck it, Universal! The film spawned a sequel, 28 Weeks Later, and of course the upcoming 28 Years Later, another after that, and possibly another after that if the box office works out (we’re betting it does). Not to mention several comic book iterations and endless influence on not just zombie horror, nor horror, but film overall. 28 Days Later would win multiple awards, sit high on many “best horror films of all time” lists, and will no doubt be messing up audiences for generations to come. Well, you know what they say: “The end is fucking nigh!” for this video. And that is what happened to 28 Days Later.
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