28 Days Later Back to Index

Imdb Rating: 7.3
Genre: Horror
Directed: Alex Garland (written by)
Country: UK
Year: 2002
Duration: 113 min

Media: Hot stuff

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Actors: Alex Palmer (as Activist), Bindu De Stoppani (as Activist), Jukka Hiltunen (as Activist), David Schneider (as Scientist), Cillian Murphy (as Jim), Toby Sedgwick (as Infected Priest), Naomie Harris (as Selena), Noah Huntley (as Mark), Christopher Dunne (as Jim's Father), Emma Hitching (as Jim's Mother), Alexander Delamere (as Mr. Bridges), Kim McGarrity (as Mr. Bridges' Daughter), Brendan Gleeson (as Frank), Megan Burns (as Hannah), Justin Hackney (as Infected Kid)

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Description: "His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't."

Four weeks after a mysterious, incurable virus spreads throughout the UK, a handful of survivors try to find sanctuary.

Comment: STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Those who read the James Herbert novel '48 will be familiar with the concept behind 28 Days Later.What if you and only a handful of other people were the sole survivors of a deadly killer virus and aside from finding enough food,fuel and water to survive,you also had to evade a gang of blood-hungry infected people with a psychological yearning to kill?It's an original,intriguing but ultimately off-puttingly nightmarish idea.Aside from this,28 Days Later is a film that's worth watching if for nothing else,its brilliant visual style.The look of a deserted,ransacked London is just one of the many breath-takingly original and exciting looks to the film.Danny Boyle is truely one of the pioneers in terms of British film-making,and can push us through to the next-level in rivalling Hollywood.****

IMDB TRIVIA FOR 28 DAYS LATER... (2002):
- The exteriors of the streets of London were shot in the early hours of the morning on weekdays. The crew only had a couple of minutes each day, and crew members had to politely ask clubbers not to walk onto the streets.
- The plane used in the film flew from Blackpool to the location in the lakes. It took the crew hours to make the same journey, but it took the pilot less than six minutes and cost Ł6,000 in fuel.
- The hospital in the film is a real day hospital and is not open at weekends. The trust managers of the hospital hire out the hospital for weekends so the filmmakers paid them directly which benefited the finances of this public hospital.
- The tower block where Hannah and her father lived was condemned and has now been demolished.
- The tunnel scene was filmed in a new tunnel extension which the filmmakers had special permission to use.
- Police allowed a stretch of the M1 motorway to be closed for a few minutes at a time for the scene where you see a long desolate stretch of road.
- Most of the film was made using digital cameras to give it the really real look (the final scenes in the cottage were shot on 35mm film). An added benefit of the digital filming was that the London shots could be set up and executed much quicker than otherwise possible which helped the filmmakers exploit very tight time windows to complete the scenes of an empty London.
- Christopher Eccleston and the other soldiers in the film had a three-day training programme with real soldiers to help them learn how to carry themselves believably.
- The filmmakers had the co-operation of councils and help from the police to clear streets (and a motorway), but only for short periods which would have been useless if not for the flexibility and speed provided by digital video cameras which were used to shoot the entire film.
- The angelic song that plays in the background, particularly during the car trip, is called "In Paradisum" by Gabriel Fauré.
- Horror novelist 'Stephen King? bought out an entire showing of the film in New York City.
- The surnames of Jim, Selena, Mark, Frank, and Hannah are never revealed, either during the film or in the credits. Likewise, the names of Jim's parents are never revealed.
- The Bible verse on the postcard that Jim is so interested in is from the Book of Nahum. Nahum was a prophet who predicted the destruction of the great city of Nineveh, the capital of the great, and at that time flourishing, Assyrian empire. It was to be utterly destroyed as a punishment for the great wickedness of its inhabitants.
- Scriptwriter Alex Garland acknowledges several sources as inspiration for his screenplay, notably John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1962), George A. Romero's "Dead" trilogy (Night, Dawn and Day) and The Omega Man (1971). Direct homages include Jim waking up in the hospital from The Day of the Triffids (1962), the chained infected being studied from Day of the Dead (1985), and the scene in the grocery store (people in the mall from Dawn of the Dead (1978)), the stop for supplies that saw a run-in with infected children (also Dawn of the Dead (1978)), and the military holing up against the plague with outsiders partially to deliberately include females (also Day of the Dead).
- Alex Garland and Danny Boyle did a great deal of research into social unrest, drawing ideas from things that had happened in Rwanda and Sierra Leone (such as the piling of bodies inside churches), but drew the line at using any actual footage from such incidents in the opening montage. All footage featuring dead bodies/desecration of bodies was faked.
- Leonardo DiCaprio was offered the role of Jim.
- Tilda Swinton was offered the role of Selena, but passed.
- Robert Carlyle was offered the role of Major Henry West.
- A back-story was developed by director Danny Boyle and actress Naomi Harris to explain her character's hard-natured, ruthlessly pragmatic outlook on life. Apparently, the character had been forced to kill her entire family in one afternoon, starting with her infected mother and father to save her baby brother, only to discover that her brother was also infected.
- The symbol used for this film is an international symbol for blood-borne biohazard.
- Ewan McGregor was the original choice to play Jim.
- The fighter jet pilot speaks Finnish. He asks "Lähetätkö helikopterin?" ("Can you please send a helicopter?").
- The fighter jet in the end belongs to Finnish Airforce.
- The flashback scenes of Jim's parents were shot on Super 8mm film.
- The word "fuck" is used 61 times throughout the whole film from the beginning to the end of the mansion scenes.
- In the scene where Jim escapes from the two soldiers who're about to execute him, the shots of the jet flying overheard were shot by director Danny Boyle. During filming, Boyle took one of the Canon XL1's being used and shot planes for about two days flying over his home in London and simply filmed them through the trees in his backyard.
- This is Brendan Gleeson's second role in films about deadly viruses. The other was Mission: Impossible II (2000).
- All of the scenes in the mansion that involved upstairs rooms were filmed downstairs as the mansion's owner lives upstairs. When Jim jumps in through the window in the roof, he is actually jumping through a hole in the corridor upstairs down to the ground floor with rain effects upstairs.
- The execution pit scene near the end was filmed outside a church off Witherington Road connecting Salisbury to Downton. One of the props teams didn't pick up the fake bodies after filming and a local hairdresser from Downton saw the massacre from the road. She panicked, crashed her car and phoned the police who came to investigate and interrogate the crew.
- While filming the mansion scenes, the crew's favorite place was The Wooden Spoon in Downton, Wiltshire. They liked it so much that they gave them one of the dead bodies from the execution pile which can still be seen today sitting at a table.
- The crew filed all of the necessary papers to destroy the petrol station in Canary Wharf, but the police were unintentionally not notified. When the explosives were detonated, police responded as if a petrol station had really exploded and sent fire brigades (although there was already one present). Danny Boyle finally resolved the manner after several hours.
- Funded by the British Film Council, which in itself is funded by the National Lottery. As a result of this, there are prominent advertisements for the National Lottery throughout the film, for example in the newsagents near the beginning of the film and in the supermarket (in the background while Jim and Frank are discussing whisky).
- The first scene of an empty London was filmed early on a weekday morning. The director Danny Boyle organized for good-looking women to stop the traffic from entering the empty streets as he rightly reckoned the drivers would be more co-operative with good looking girls.
- If you did actually travel 27 miles North East of Manchester as stated in the movie, you would end up in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<- SPOILER: There were two alternate endings filmed. Both are available on the DVD. One had Hannah and Selena taking Jim to a hospital to try to treat his gunshot wound, but they are unsuccessful and he dies. They leave together. This is the one that was put after the credits on some US prints, and when the film is shown on UK television. Another ending was filmed that was pretty much like the theatrical ending, but with a rooster instead of Jim. A third alternate ending was written, but not filmed. It broke off right after Frank becomes infected. In this version the military didn't show up and Jim captured Frank alive and took him to the lab where Rage was developed. A man who has barricaded himself in says Rage can be cured by total blood replacement. Jim is a compatible donor, so he swaps blood with Frank, who is cured while he becomes infected. This was dropped because it didn't make sense as there was no way they could completely remove all of Frank's old blood. This is presented on the DVD as narrated storyboards.
- SPOILER: There are several scenes missing from the released version in addition to alternate endings. All of these are available on the DVD. Additional Scenes Cut From The Final Release: More footage of Jim walking around the abandoned London streets. As Jim, Selena and Mark are walking along the Docklands Railway, they find a ?hospital train? which they investigate. Jim finds a mobile phone but there is no signal. The scene is supposed to demonstrate a retrospective look at the events leading up to mass infection as the government must have used hospital trains to cope with the mass overflow in hospitals. There is a scene where Jim, Selena, Hannah and her father are trying to get out of London (which would have appeared before the tunnel scene). The shot pans up to a flyover with smashed vehicles everywhere, some hanging over the edge and the city in the background. This scene appears untreated on the DVD as the film makers never added CGI since the scene was not used i.e. you can still see moving traffic etc. On the drive up to Manchester, you see Jim, Selena and Hannah all taking turns driving and acting out the character of a taxi driver. The scene was cut as it was felt the characters had bonded enough and the shot didn't really work anyway as it was a little cringeworthy. An alternate take of Jones's death with the infected overrunning the mansion and killing him. This scene also had Col. West shooting the floppy-hatted soldier (with great remorse) plus Farrel and Selena looking down into a basement swarming with the infected. Final shot is West bolting a door to prevent the infected getting to him and an infected woman trying to bite through the glass to reach him. Jim hiding under the floorboards to avoid Mailer and the floppy-hatted soldier as they rampage through the house.

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