28 Days Later Bodies 28 Days Later Baby

In this 2002 post-apocalyptic horror picture directed by Danny Boyle and written by novelist-turned screenwriter Alex Garland, a literal hate plague begins taking over Great United kingdom later animal rights activists set up loose an infected chimp in a lab at Cambridge Academy. While scientists had designed the "Rage" virus as a fashion of neutralizing violent impulses, it ended up having the opposite effect: in one case freed, the chimp starts to excarnify its would-be rescuers. Cue the cut-away.

Twenty-eight days later on, Jim (Cillian Potato) awakens from a coma; he finds himself naked in a totally deserted infirmary (which sits in the eye of an eerily abandoned London) with a scarred-over head wound, an impressive growth of facial hair, and no thought of what'south happened in the past month. Jim wanders around the city, plastic bag of Pepsi cans in mitt, before he meets some not-shambling, angry-every bit-hell Rage-infected pseudo-zombies. Subsequently escaping their wrath, Jim teams up with a grouping of fellow survivors to boot some donkey in search of an escape — and a cure, promised past radio broadcasts from a distant barricade.

Survivor Selena (Naomie Harris), a realist, considers survival the only option and thinks of Jim'south naiveté as a hindrance. Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah, father and daughter, meet things less bleakly — and both suffer for it.

The small group continues forth out of London in search of the promised cure, only when they make it at the source of the radio broadcasts, their promised land turns into another nightmare...

28 Days After avoids using the word "zombie", and it also avoids a number of common zombie tropes: once the Rage virus takes over, those infected with it go fast-moving, mindlessly violent killers (without a hunger for brains). Infectees are "transformed" almost immediately, preventing them from hiding their condition. The Rage infection itself devastates society and causes an apocalypse due to the ease of manual and the overall panic. Despite precautions to avert the appearance of a zombie movie, the film ended upwardly getting pigeonholed every bit a zombie picture anyway. It did fairly well at the box office, received several comic-book prequels (which explore the period of time between the initial outbreak and the film), and managed to spawn a sequel (28 Weeks Subsequently). The creators has planned a 3rd installment in the series called 28 Months Afterward, just information technology has been stuck in Development Hell always since the release of Weeks.

Not to be confused with 28 Days, where Sandra Bullock plays an alcoholic in a detox centre.

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28 Days Later on provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abased Hospital Awakening: Jim wakes up in an Abandoned Hospital the eponymous xx-eight days later on the Zombie Apocalypse begins. He winds upwards in an abandoned hospital once more afterwards being shot during the climax.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Subverted, as it's shown to take numerous fierce hacks for Selena to chop off her first partner'south arm with a machete before finally killing him.
• Alternate History: Various indicators for the time, including tax disc on Frank'southward automobile dated February 2002.
• Anonymous Benefactor: Correct at the get-go of the chief story, in one case Jim wakes up, someone, perhaps a doctor or a nurse, covered the blinds, locked his hospital room door, and shoved the fundamental under the door, and so that he could become out if he woke from his coma.
• Ax-Crazy: Those infected by the Rage Virus get completely and homicidially bonkers, and as a upshot attack and impale everything that moves.
• Action Survivor: Jim and the other survivors. He in detail survived early on on through sheer dumb luck.
• Adrenaline Makeover:
  • Even if this trope is related with female person characters, information technology goes for Jim. He started as The Load, ended up as badass.
  • Arguably applies to Hannah as well. Her father initially joins forces with Jim and Selena so that they tin can take care of her if something happens to him. Simply she ends up saving them at the end when she kills Major West.
• Affably Evil: Major W. From the start, there'southward something ominously odd almost how imperturbable the character seems to be.
• Animal Wrongs Group: The cause of Britain going to zombie hell? Activists releasing infected apes.
• Anti-Villain: Major West is possibly the most visible example of a villain in the entire picture. And the motion picture itself heavily implies that he's just gone completely insane. Of course, with the total exception of Sergeant Farrell, the residual of the soldiers are really just complete scumbags, with Mitchell being the near outright villainous.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: Apparently, suicide was more than mutual than not, every bit was an increase in church building attendance. And so at that place's the military...
• Apocalypse How: Regional/Societal Disruption. Despite radio reports that the virus has reached Paris and New York, it turns out to be confined to Uk, as they realise on seeing an airplane flying over at high altitude, so either the reports were incorrect or the virus was successfully contained. At least in this moving-picture show.
• Arc Words: "Hello" is probably the nigh oftentimes uttered discussion throughout the movie, particularly by Jim. It'south also the word that Selena made out of defunction to get the plane's attention.
• Artistic License – Biology: The charge per unit at which the Infected vomit claret should kill them from dehydration and/or blood loss within a thing of hours. At that place'southward also the speed at which the virus infects its victims. A virus that induces intense rage is theoretically feasible, but infected victims are shown to accept less than a minute to go from normal to mindlessly enraged. In reality, even an exceptionally aggressive virus would take several days to infect a victim to a point where their behavior would get-go to modify.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The radio message says that the blockade is to the northeast of Manchester. When Jim breaks back into it, yous see signs for Blackpool, Fleetwood, Lancaster and the Lake Commune. These signs are only seen on the M6, which runs w of Manchester.
  • In addition, the blockade is said to be on the M602 state highway, which is an urban motorway to the west of Greater Manchester in real life.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Corporal Mitchell and most of the soldiers start off equally affable to the surviving trio, but they're actually a grouping of violent psychopaths who murder i of their own for a disagreement, attempt to kill Jim for the aforementioned reason, and plan to rape Selena and Hannah. Jim goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on them at the stop, and despite how fearful they may have been in their final moments, they deserve it.
  • Major Henry W as well since he's the one who made the program to have any female person survivors as sex slaves, had Farrell murdered because he did non want to go along with the plan and shot Jim for killing his men even though it was self-defense.
  • The animal rights activists who got the whole zombie-apocalypse going in the beginning place may count as well, because that they weren't in a higher place roughing upward a balmy mannered scientist who was only a Punch-Clock Villain at all-time. They also ignored his endless pleas, and didn't think information technology was odd that almost all the monkeys were in completely sealed cages.
• Badass Adorable: Hannah certainly by the end. She's still a very cute teenage girl, but she takes it on herself to man the getaway automobile and get rid of Westward herself.
• Badass Longcoat: As long as Selena is in Crazy Survivalist style, she wears i. Made of leather, no less!
• Badass Normal: Despite being an average every day guy, Jim ends upwardly taking on and killing several crazed, simply professional soldiers, albeit ironically with the aid of the infected.
• Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: A variation. The soldiers apparel Selena and Hannah up in fancy gowns earlier they intend to rape them.
• Battle in the Pelting: Jim's Roaring Binge of Revenge in the terminal human activity takes place during a thunderstorm; whatsoever exterior scene has him and the others drenched within seconds.
• Beware the Nice Ones:Afterward being subject to a few too many rounds of cruelty and knowing Selena and Hannah are going to get raped by Westward's men, Jim proves why the beautiful ones are the ones to watch out for. The same applies to Hannah, who backs the cab containing W straight into the entryway of the firm, knowing that his infected soldiers will get him.
• Bilingual Bonus: In the cease of the motion picture, the airplane pilot of the airplane is speaking Finnish on the radio. The very last words he says are, "Lähetätkö helikopterin?" which means "Will yous transport a helicopter?"
• Bookends: The abandoned hospitals. At the beginning, Jim wakes upwardly in 1 and leaves to see how the residuum of the city has been evacuated due to the outbreak. At the end, he wakes up in ane as he's recovering from his bullet wound, only he all the same has Selena and Hannah.
• Bottomless Magazines: Played Straight when W'south men defend their outpost from a sudden Zerg Blitz of infectees.
• Broken Bird: Selena has this attitude. Co-ordinate to Naomie Harris, she and Danny Boyle came up with a backstory to explain information technology: Selena plainly had to kill her unabridged family in one afternoon due to the infection — including a baby brother.
• Cleaved Tape: Jim's beginning seven spoken words are all, "Hello?" Understandable, seeing as the metropolis seems devoid of human life.
• Cerebus Call-Back: Inverted. At the end, Jim says to Selena "you looked alright in this, you know" every bit she'due south sewing the Help sign. She's using the dress the soldiers made her habiliment to get raped in.
• Convenient Coma: Played with. Jim went into a coma somewhere around the outbreak. When he wakes upwards, he is very weak, malnourished, and dehydrated. Most likely a week or ii more than and he would simply expire. Subverted in the case of his parents. They were almost sure he was dead, so they committed suicide. However, whatever his injuries were that landed him in the blackout in the first place, they don't impede him on his journeying to becoming a badass.
• Chekhov's Skill: A few:
  • Selena is a chemist or chemist. It helps to sleep, it helps to get stoned and more than or less saved Jim in the end.
  • Hannah'due south power to drive and doing it recklessly. Doesn't audio that important or strange, but she's about 14.
• Crazy Survivalist: Although Selena isn't exactly crazy (however), she'due south incredibly ruthless and will leave anyone behind if they tin can't grab up, distrusts others, and openly mocks any plans for salvation. "Staying alive is as good as it gets." She warms up once she's spent some time with the others, though. Naomi Harris explained that she and Danny Boyle came upwards with a back story that Selena had to impale her whole family in one afternoon, including her younger siblings, to explain her harsh outlook on life.
• Creepy Child:
  • The infected boy from the roadside bar. While being extremely dangerous, he'due south not even x. Later easily subduing him, Jim openly struggles with himself if he should impale the kid, especially when he speaks — the only infected to do and then in the entire film.
  • Hannah, due to being given valium right before a zombie attack. She's this for the soldiers in universe — asking who volition be the replacement if Henry is killed, right in the centre of the nighttime. She sobers up a little before Jim finally gets into the mansion.
• Creepy Crows: A distressed Frank sees a crow pecking at the corpse of someone at the station they were all meant to discover refuge in. Angrily, Frank tries to moving ridge it off...only for the movement to cause infected blood to drop into his centre and infect him.
• Daylight Horror:
  • The infected attack just as much in the 24-hour interval every bit they do at nighttime — makes sense, them being normal humans and having relatively poor night vision.
  • Jim wakes up alone in a desolate hospital in the eye of the day.
  • Jim fighting the soldiers at the road blockade.
• Deadly Scratch: The Rage zombies are so ambitious and infectious that when Selena sees her companion Mark nursing a small wound later on a fight, she kills him on the spot without hesitation.

  Selena: I didn't know he was infected, okay? He knew. I could run across it in his confront.

• Death by Pragmatism: Subverted with Selena as she gradually relaxes her survivalism.
• Deconstructed Trope:
  • Of some popular zombie tropes. The very things that make the rage virus and so deadly also stop it brusk of catastrophe the world; the violent, visible insanity of the infected renders it impossible to disguise a seize with teeth victim, and the fact that infectees succumb to rapid, shrieking madness within seconds of infection ways information technology'southward impossible for the virus to spread over any distance a human tin can't travel on foot (across oceans, say).
  • Furthermore, the zombies never think to eat each other, and they starve to decease en masse inside a couple weeks.
  • Specially agreeable given that this is pretty much the picture that started and codification the Technically Living Zombie trope. The beginning flick to showcase this kind of apocalypse outright proves why information technology's incommunicable!
• Destroy the Security Camera: The Beast Wrongs Group activists who infiltrate the research lab at the commencement of the movie are shown spraying the security cameras on their fashion in.
• The Canis familiaris Bites Back: Later on losing her dad in a staged situation and almost getting raped, Hannah drives a cab containing West correct into the hands of Mailer, giving him a painful, disturbing decease.
• Door-Closes Ending: The original ending concluded with the door closing as Selena and Hannah left Jim's body behind, going into an uncertain hereafter.
• Downer Ending: Danny Boyle has stated that the "true ending" — as opposed to of the Focus Grouping Ending of the final cut — has Jim dying in the abandoned hospital later being shot past the soldiers. You tin imagine why this was reduced to a mere alternate ending. Downplayed — it's much more than of a Bittersweet Ending in that Selena and Hannah survive and are presumably rescued.
• Driven to Suicide: Jim'due south parents, seeing the outbreak and thinking that their son had died, kill themselves. So, apparently, did many other people.
• Commuter of a Black Cab: Frank avoids this stereotype, only a deleted scene shows Selena and Jim taking turns driving his black cab and doing their best London cabby impersonation, much to his badgerer. The DVD Commentary mentions that you lot can't drive a blackness cab without experiencing an irresistible urge to do this.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The ending every bit released. Jim survives, all the master characters survive the mansion assault at the end, the infected begin to die off from starvation, and a passing jet sees their distress bulletin laid out in the grass and radios in a rescue.
• The Terminate Is Nigh: A bit of graffiti ◊ written on the wall, when Jim walks through London. "The terminate is EXTREMELY FUCKING nigh."
• Establishing Grapheme Moment: Frank has absolutely fantastic one, in the very same scene explaining how he managed to survive for so long, what motivates him and what kind of person he really is. All within the span of about 90 seconds.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Jones is fully on board with the plan to rape the women and is fine with killing Farrell for refusing to participate. Even so, he balks when Mitchell wants to kill Farrell slowly with a bayonet, and shoots him to spare him that fate.
• Evil Overlooker: The about common diversity of the in a higher place poster adds a pair of zombie eyes ◊ to the background.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Later on the soldiers imprison and almost rape a woman and teenage girl, Jim beats the crap out of every soldier in the complex (aided by an unwitting zombie) and gouges out Mitchell's optics with his thumbs.
• Heart Scream: Jim himself does this to Corporal Mitchell, shoving his thumbs into his eye sockets.
• Failed a Spot Check: The unnamed animate being rights group intruders were then busy documenting "animal abuse" that they completely failed to register how agitated the chimpanzees were, so the woman apparently leading the group opens one of the cages confronting the advice of the researcher. So naturally, she gets attacked past the chimp she unleashed, which she then tells the rest of her group to trounce to death.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Jim spends most a third of the film shirtless or outright naked. Allow's just say that he was in a coma and didn't swallow for about a month. In the third act, the disservice is even stronger — Jim is not only shirtless, but also covered in blood and going around killing everyone.
  • When y'all become to run across Selena in her underwear, it's because the soldiers stripped her and are planning to rape her every bit well as Hannah.
  • Numerous infected are naked, including a topless adult female.
• A Father to His Men: Major Due west is friendly and sociable with his troops, even comforting 1 of them as they die.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Farrell hits Mitchell to protect Jim and Selena from him, West calls him out simply instead of questioning him why he did it, he simply stares at him and orders him very coldy to move the bodies off the lawn instead of request him why he hit Mitchell hinting that West knows why Farrell did it because he did not like Mitchell raping one of the girls though he does tell them all to boring down clearly telling them to wait for the right fourth dimension and the gild he gave out to Farrell was a punishment for stopping Mitchell.
  • "Mitchell, I swear to god this is going to end badly for you..."
• Furniture Occludent: Shopping trolleys have been dumped in the stairwells of the apartment cake where Frank lives, not only to slow down the Infected but as well because the racket of anyone trying to climb over them serves as an alarm.
• Gallows Humour: When Jim walks around the deserted London, we see a bit of graffiti in a church;
• Ghost City: The outset two-thirds of the film have place in a generally-abandoned London.
• Happy Ending Override: Each sequel (so the film and both comics continuity) take various degrees of it, most importantly the virus getting outside Britain. But aside from that, in two of those, Jim is put in prison for murder of British army personnel. You know, what he did in more than justified self-defense and to rescue his beloved ones, while the victims were AWOL at best, Dangerous Deserters at worst.
• Detest Plague: One of the most literal examples ever, though it's called the "Rage Virus".
• Hazardous Water: Just one drop of infected blood is enough to turn anyone.
• Heroic Cede: Intentional or not, Sergeant Farrell does buy Jim enough time to escape while Jones and Mitchell bicker over how they'll kill the sergeant; Jones thinks to but shoot him while Mitchell wants to do it tiresome with a bayonet. And then they bicker when Jones shoots Farrell as a twisted form of mercy.
• Hidden Depths: Sergeant Farrell, who muses on Globe'due south 'return to normalcy' once humanity is gone, and later shows himself to be a fan of The Simpsons. When Major West asks him what he used to do/be before he joined the army, Farrell simply stares at him and doesn't answer.
• Loftier-Force per unit area Blood: The film incarnates the trope as Mailer. Is he vomiting? Is he bleeding from the mouth? He's literally gushing claret onto people. And he never runs out. Unluckily for them, The Virus spreads on contact with the eyes or mouth. Information technology looks like they are trying to hold their breath while someone aims a firehose at their face up.
• Hope Spot: For a infinitesimal, information technology seems that Private Jones may actually escape the mansion, merely to be ambushed and killed by Jim with a bayonette.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Major Westward has come up to this determination.

  Major West : This is what I've seen in the four weeks since infection. People killing people. Which is much what I saw in the four weeks before infection, and the 4 weeks before that, and earlier that, and as far dorsum every bit I intendance to retrieve. People killing people... Which to my mind, puts united states of america in a state of normality right now.

• I Warned You: Jim was admittedly right that driving into a tunnel is obviously a shit idea.
• Important Haircut: When Jim shaves without water or soap and crops his pilus, he stops being The Load.
• Improbable Babe Survival: Oh how averted. Both the church and roadside bar are probably the most Squick places in the whole moving-picture show thank you to the disfavor of this trope. But at the same time, Hannah survives.
• It Gets Easier:
  • Selena is a pharmacist and used to be a regular gal. But when you lot come across her for the get-go time, she casually murders infected as if null and then doesn't hesitate for a second when having to kill Mark earlier he succumbs to the virus. That'south about ten days since she killed a human for the first time. Her backstory has her having to kill her own family in cocky-defense, then just going from there.
  • At first, Jim barely even tries to defend himself and is in deep shock due to all the violence he's experiencing. Subsequently on, he gets his kickoff impale by reluctantly bashing a kid's head open with his bat, having no other option and nevertheless struggling most it few days later. But by the final deed, he runs around the blockade and manor and kills the soldier one-past-one in cold claret, without as much as a blink.
• Karmic Expiry: Corporal Mitchell. And too, Major West at the end.
• Kick the Son of a Bowwow:
  • Jim kills Davis at the blockade and at the estate, surprise-attacks Mitchell, brutally killing the soldier past gouging his eyes out and chirapsia him to death. Don't experience bad for him though he more than had information technology coming.
  • Mailer and Clifton kill both Bedford and Bell who both of them concord with West's plan to have any woman raped and go on as sex slaves.
  • Mailer drags and kills West inside the estate after grabbing him from the back of the Taxi cab which though horrific is very well-deserved since West is the 1 who chained him up then leave him to die by existence exposed to the elements, had Farrell murdered and simply shot Jim for killing most of his men even though they were about to rape Selena and Hannah.
• The Final Human being Heard a Knock...: The audience and Jim begin the movie unsure if anyone is alive except Jim. Inevitably, he runs into other survivors.
• Lethal Chef: Jones, resident tin can opener.

  Major West: Jones, did you find while cooking that these eggs are off?
  Jones: I thought the salt might encompass the taste, sir.

• Let Me Go This Straight...:

  Jim: No, no. Meet, this is a really shit idea... And y'all know why? Considering it'south really obviously a shit idea. So nosotros drive into a tunnel full of crashed cars and broken glass... It's really fucking obviously a shit idea!

• Belatedly to the Tragedy: Jim after waking upwardly in the hospital from his coma.
• Living is More Than Surviving: Invoked, discussed, mocked, reconstructed, subverted, double subverted... Permit'due south just say the whole flick is 1 huge ride of this trope. Entire Character Development of Selena is build around information technology. When Jim meets her for the starting time time, she'south already a jaded survivalist utterly loathing the sole concept. By that time she lost everyone she ever cared for and had to personally kill more of them only to stay live. She and then has a serial of misadventures along with Jim, Frank and Hannah, going back and forth from warming up and remaining on the border. By the stop of the story, she gleefully embraces there are still things to alive for, even if the journey to that realisation was extremely painful.

  Selena: Staying alive is as skillful as it gets.

• The Load: Jim is for the commencement human action of the film a complete airhead. In his defense he'due south come out of a coma to find the whole earth flipped upside down, just his bumbling still gets Mark killed and almost Selena equally well. He apace starts getting more competent every bit the plot unfolds.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One of the things Frank looted somewhere effectually the metropolis was a riot shield, forth with other bits of riot gear. He makes a great use of the shield, easily stopping charging infected in a tight staircase.
• Madden Into Misanthropy: Major West and the soldiers.
• Male person Frontal Nudity: Cillian Murphy'south penis is on full display in his first scene.
• Meaningful Echo: Possibly a bit of a stretch, but Jim'due south story begins with him alone, frightened, and confused, badly wandering abased London, screaming "Hi!" over and over and receiving no respond. Information technology ends with him and his loved ones in a secure countryside home, creating a "HELLO" message together that is near assuredly answered.
  • Some other instance is Selena's promise to kill anyone who endangers her "in a heartbeat", just like she did with Mark.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Subverted. Of the two female person characters in the pic none dies, while Jim is the sole male survivor of 28 Days After. The fact that in the 'real ending' Jim dies and the girls still survive only rubs more than salt in the wound. However Jim's mother commits suicide to avert infection before the film starts, the offset infected homo was a woman, there are many corpses of women amidst the piles of expressionless and a few female infected.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Sergeant Farrell gets shot by Jones before Mitchell can bayonet him. Funny enough, Jim later kills Jones by bayonetting him.
  • Invoked when Selena hands Hannah a handful of Valium pills earlier they are both to be raped. And subverted - Selena is making sure the daughter will exist simply also stoned to care.
• Mildly Armed forces: The soldiers are doing their duty, but when they have gratuitous time, they tend to be almost childish in their behavior. Not to mention their grand answer to infection is to set a trap for healthy women and rape them.
  • And how long did it take for pretty much all of them (sans Farrell) to resort to this? A month.
• Mirror Character: Jim's brutality during the climax was designed to draw parallels between the infected and Jim's own intense rage towards the soldiers. Information technology shows. So much that Selena and Hannah mistake him for an Infected.
• Missing Mom: It'due south never explained what happened to Hannah'southward mother and it's actually left quite ambiguous.
• Money Is Not Ability: Mark talks well-nigh the early on days, when people were trying to escape the country.

  Mark: I call back my dad had all this greenbacks. He idea maybe nosotros could purchase our style onto a plane, even though cash was completely useless. 10 thousand other people had the same idea.

• Mood Whiplash: The introduction scene for Frank and Hannah goes from frantic escape and barbarous fight to an awkward toast with crème de menthe and begetter-daughter grouse. It's and so extreme, even in-universe Jim and Selena are completely puzzled, since they just barely got abroad with their lives and are clearly in adrenaline-induced stupor.
• Mook Horror Show: In one case Jim finally snaps, he proceeds to methodically hunt downward each and every 1 of the soldiers at the mansion. The result plays very much like this trope — up to him doing Offscreen Teleportation.
• Moral Myopia: West's "Y'all killed all of my boys.". Several of whom were preparing to rape Selena and Hannah, a 14-year-old daughter, which was disturbing fifty-fifty by W'south standards.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Jim is toned only pretty damn scrawny, he'southward still capable of taking out Mitch in the finale and killing him via bashing his skull against the wall and gouging his eyes out.
• Naïve Animal Lover: The events were kicked off by a agglomeration of beast-rights activists liberating a agglomeration of infected apes from a lab.
• Naked on Arrival: The get-go fourth dimension nosotros come across Jim, he's naked.
• Nice Task Breaking It, Hero: Nice job breaking out those lab monkeys, hippies in the intro!
  • Also to Jim, for lighting a candle and thus alerting the zombies where he and the others were hiding.
• Nightmare Sequence: Jim wakes upward and finds out that he'south lone in a desolated area with a herd of horses fleeing (a telltale sign of the presence of Infected people). His reaction is just a terrified "Howdy!" shouted repeatedly. Then nosotros larn that it'southward but his nightmare.
  • The same scene, with the same Scare Chord is used right after, as a Schmuck Bait for adiency.
• Noble Demon: One estimation of Major West. Most likely that's how he excuses his own actions.
• Noble Shoplifter: Later on gamboling through a deserted greengrocer'southward, the heroes get out behind a credit card.
• No FEMA Response: While club has pretty much entirely collapsed in Great Britain, the outbreak hasn't spread outside of the British Isles due to the very brusque period betwixt infection and full on Rage. Granted, it has only been less than a calendar month, and other governments may have withal been trying to figure out how to help, assuming that their first aid missions weren't overrun or driven out past the spreading outbreak.
• Nothing Is Scarier: One of the freakiest moments in the picture is actually towards the beginning, when Jim wanders through a desolate and silent London.
  • The quiet only gradually climaxing song that plays in that scene? Information technology is at that place because after almost five minutes of apple-polishing silence, the car alarm almost killed the test audiences. Yes, they had to tone downward the Nothing Is Scarier considering of how well it worked.
• Non a Zombie: Jim's first encounter with a zombie is a erstwhile priest. He is naturally reluctant to impale the zombie.
  • Not to mention that this priest swings his arms equally if to warn Jim to stay abroad. He seems to be the simply zombie in the pic capable of some degree of such self-control.
    • Well, him and Frank. Poor bounder.
• Cypher Left to Practise but Die: Major West explains to Jim this is what his soldiers were starting to call back after no contact from HQ and no relief e'er came to them - fifty-fifty if they were to somehow make it, there is just noting for them to exercise after the infected starve to decease, null to achieve and no reason to proceed living at all. And then West "promised them women".
• Non Using the "Z" Word: The term "zombie" is never used in the entire film.
• No Zombie Cannibals: Unlike traditional zombies the infected still have basic human needs, but are likewise crazy to accost them. Left lonely all the infected die of hunger and dehydration within a few weeks.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Played with in Major West, who uses it to sucker in the women as sex slaves for his men to proceed upwards morale.
  • Technically, West is trying to ensure a future, which will help keep up morale. Aye, the soldiers will get sex slaves out of it, simply Due west seems to call up his intentions are noble.
  • Doubles every bit Exact Words: the radio message in the film says the militia has "the respond to infection." But he never says that the "answer" is raping salubrious women.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Frank's scene with the crow dripping blood into his eye, and immediately after. Heartwrenching as he realizes he has literally moments to tell his daughter how much he loves her, and has to push her away earlier the infection takes concur, for her own safe.
  • The dawning realization the characters have when Major West explains what exactly he meant by 'curing the infection'.
• Only One Proper name: Nigh of the survivors, besides as the soldiers.
• Only Sane Man: Among the soldiers, Sgt. Farrell. He'due south the only one of the soldiers who refuses to accept function in West's programme to 'repopulate' the earth, and is also the just i who's figured out that the remainder of the world quarantining Britain (which is, afterward all, a relatively small island) is a lot more probable than these people being the last human beings on World.
  • He'southward too the merely one among the soldiers to brainstorm to realize (or care) that Major W has gone completely batshit insane.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Though the filmmakers tried to avert making a "zombie movie", many consider the Infected to merely be another archetype of "zombie". Unlike typical zombies upwardly to that bespeak, the Infected were intelligent, extremely fast, and while they did bite and tear people apart, they didn't actually eat them.
  • Despite trying not to exist a zombie film, the Infected of 28 Days started the modernistic thought of "sprinting zombies". Dawn of the Dead (2004), every bit well every bit the video game Left iv Dead, cited 28 Days equally direct inspiration for their own mindless killing machines.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Major West comforts one of his dying men.
  • Said dying human refusing to let Mitchell bayonet Farrell, opting to shoot him kickoff.
• Post–Wake-Up Realization: Jim has been in a coma since the zombie apocalypse started. He wakes up, leaves the mysteriously abandoned hospital...and slowly realises what has actually happened.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Information technology's a really fucking obviously shit idea!
  • In written form, THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH.
• Red Optics, Take Warning: The Rage virus turns the infected's optics cherry. If the sequel is any indication, it's because they're bleeding. Which is just equally freaky.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Of a sorts. The infected were inspired both by real life epidemics - foot-and-mouth disease and mad cow disease - and recent anthrax and bio-terrorism scares in London. The reasoning was that George Romero's zombies were inspired by the fright of nuclear assail, while a more modern cultural fear was disease outbreaks. They were also influenced by many hot social problems such as road rage, infirmary rage, air rage etc. There was a lot of research done on the things that had happened in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Jim himself at the film's climax.
• Scenery Gorn: The directors in their commentary were amazed at how they achieved a sense of ruin by blocking traffic for a few seconds. The film also has some really beautifully framed and executed shots that they shot with DV cameras to requite it a actually gritty feel.
• Scenery Porn: On the flipside, at that place are some downright beautiful shots of the British landscape as Jim, Hannah, Selena, and Frank make their mode north to Manchester.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: In-universe for Selena and Hannah from the soldiers' perspective. Non to the viewers though as the soldiers program to rape them.
• Shirtless Scene: Stupid Sexy Potato.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Selena does this in the alternative ending to become to the medical cabinet. Dissimilar the typical example, she doesn't target the lock direct, but instead uses the impact force of a bullet to simply tear a hole on the cabinet's door right next to it, rendering the otherwise intact lock useless.
• Shout-Out:
  • The entire premise of the picture show (an escaped experimental virus causes mental degeneration, inducing unsafe, erratic beliefs among those infected) appears to recall George Romero's The Crazies (1973).
  • (Literally) The mode in which Jim calls out for any survivors whilst leaving the hospital perfectly mirrors the way that Anthony Delio does with a microphone in Romero's 24-hour interval of the Dead (1985).
  • Likewise, Jim waking upwardly in the hospital to observe London abandoned mirrors the beginning of The Day of the Triffids.
  • The ruby eyes sported by the "zombies" appear to take direct inspiration from those appearing on the eponymous living dead in The Living Expressionless at Manchester Morgue.
  • One of the soldiers talks about his favorite joke from The Simpsons, which was then mentioned in the commentary for that episode ("Treehouse of Horror III) by Al Jean. Though Jean calls the moving-picture show "28 Days" and thinks it was near vampires.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Jim.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: This is more complicated. Selena is on the cynical end, to the bespeak where she kills her companion without a single second of hesitation just to exist certain he will die before infection takes hold. Frank is on the idealism and optimism side (at least when compared with any other character) and Jim is in the middle and going back and forth from i side to another. Frank is eventually killed by the soldiers he was trying to find, while Selena's cynicism is wearing out, equally she is getting closer with Jim. Then at that place is major W, who is as contemptuous every bit Selena. In the original ending Jim died merely after embracing the idealism side, so the cynicism actually won, but exam audiences plant it style likewise depressing. Which leads to Selena embracing the optimistic side of the scale and the upbeat catastrophe.
  • And even if y'all consider Frank as a person on idealism side, without comparison with more contemptuous character he'southward a Knight in Sour Armour(!).
• Sole Surviving Scientist: There is a tie-in comic covering events between both films with a scientist who played a role in the creation of the Rage Virus. He admits this to a girl that he had escaped a holding facility with, and plans to atone by becoming one of these, being that he'south ane of the few people alive (maybe the but one) who knows annihilation well-nigh the virus and has the best take chances of curing it. Unfortunately, she had lost her parent earlier during the initial outbreak, and lost her brother during the escape. Apparently learning that the guy she'd been helping was the root cause of those things is too much for her, and then beginning she kisses him, and then grabs his gun and shoots him. Then lets herself exist killed past the soldiers pursuing them. So much for that.
• Stylistic Suck: The film was shot with cheap and dispensable cameras to reach its realistic look. Even in mail-production, Boyle himself went out of his way to make the footage look even worse.
• Swarm of Rats: While Jim, Selena, and Mark change a flat tire inside a darkened tunnel, i of these suddenly appears... and turns out to be fleeing ahead of a Swarm of Infected.
• Constructed Plague: The Rage Virus, which was originally meant to soothe temperamental persons. This is like to the plot of the film Quiet, which it may have inspired.
• Team Dad: Frank. To the point where Jim actually calls him dad half-asleep.
• Technically Living Zombie: The Infected are a poster-child for this trope, and in many ways 28 Days Later started the wave of interest in this new "zombie" (really, Crazies). Annihilation that will kill a human can impale them, i.east. riddling their chest with bullets that are *not* expertly aimed. They've got a stiff "mind-over-matter" adrenaline rush, though, so don't wait for them to get right on height of you. They're not smart plenty to use weapons, and aren't explicitly trying to "eat" people (though they exercise animalistically bite people to attack). The existent danger is that they'll easily infect you from shut contact, what with all of their mucous membranes disintegrating into a bloody mess and puking up torrents of claret with little or no provocation. This trope also comes dorsum to hurt them as they are still living human being beings who need to swallow and slumber but the virus overrides such instincts. Equally a result, they die off within a few weeks due to a combination of starvation, dehydration and sleep deprivation, all made worse by the virus causing them to utilize much more than energy than normal.
• Time Title: The main story starts twenty-eight days later on the prologue.
• Championship Confusion: in 2000, there was a Sandra Bullock film chosen 28 Days, in which she played a adult female who was court-ordered to go through a rehab programme. 28 Days Afterwards was released ii years afterwards in 2002, leading a few (before they saw whatever trailers or promotional materials), to initially wonder if a sequel to 28 Days had been made.
• Token Good Teammate: Sergeant Farrell, once again. The fact that only 1 of the soldiers isn't either a psychotic Manchild or insane is a fairly meaning spoiler. He is the only one who goes out a heroic expiry since he decides to give his life abroad by distracting both Mitchell and Jones so that Jim tin can save the girls.
• Took a Level in Badass: Jim post-snapping.
  • All the survivors. Frank was just a uncomplicated taxi driver, and in his start appearance, is wearing badass riot gear and beats several infected to decease.
• Too Dumb to Live: Allow'southward first with the scientists who decided to use chimpanzees, which are incredibly strong and tin get pretty damn aggressive already, equally guinea pigs for the Rage virus. So the animal rights activists who release said infected chimpanzees afterwards being warned that they're contagious. Additionally said scientists use a facility that doesn't even contain the nearly bones of quarantine procedures. (Or, plainly, decent security systems.)
• Unbuilt Trope: Of the Technically Living Zombie. While they're faster and smarter than the usual "shambling corpses", they besides have all the weaknesses of regular man beings: they can be killed with regular bullets at eye mass, and Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain is non at all required. And because they're yet alive, they still need to eat: the film makes clear that because the Rage virus suppresses the hunger and sleep functions, all the zombies will starve to decease in a thing of weeks.
• Unstoppable Rage: The Rage virus induces a perpetual one into its victims, which despite making them stronger and faster, information technology likewise suppresses hunger and other vital processes, pregnant they starve to death eventually.
• Viral Transformation: Dissimilar more traditional zombie movies, the "zombies" in these films are living humans that have been infected with the Rage virus.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The animal-rights activists in the prologue.
• Wham Line: "I promised them women..."
• Wham Shot: As Jim lies on his back in the rain, hiding from the soldiers in the forest, he sees the contrail of a plane flight overhead. This makes him realize that Sergeant Farrell was right: the virus didn't end the globe and that England has been quarantined.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the poor goldfish, last seen in Frank and Hannah's flat? Presumably something bad.
• What You Are in the Nighttime: Jim maintains that, while Selena would abandon Frank and Hannah if they became a liability, (although she changes her tune afterward on) he would not, even if it ended up getting him killed. Sergeant Farrell is the only i of the soldiers to refuse to accept anything to exercise with West's program, and is executed for his troubles, but not earlier distracting Jones and Mitchell long enough for Jim to escape a similar fate.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Jim gathers a bagful of abandoned banknotes, just soon discards them when chased past the infected. Justified; what utilize would he accept for them given Great britain'due south current land?
• Zombie Apocalypse: Only for United kingdom.
• Zombie Infectee: The Rage Virus is too fast acting for this to last long, but the man traveling with Selena is one, begging for his life despite being infected. The father averts this, knowing he'due south been infected and trying to get his daughter to stay away.
• Zombie on Fire: Some of the infected in the city go along right on chasing their casualty at full speed even after beingness set ablaze by Molotov cocktails.
• Zombie Puke Assault: Some "infected" constantly hemorrhage high-pressure blood out of their mouths.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TwentyEightDaysLater

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