28 Days Later

28 Days Later is a 2002 post-apocalyptic science fiction movie directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. 28 Days Later is set in England at the beginning of the 21st century.

Synopsis

The film begins with a group of activists storming an animal testing laboratory and releasing the chimpanzees therein. The animals however, were being tested with a disease known as "rage", making them extremely violent. Rage is highly infectious, and any contact with infected blood will transfer the disease in a matter of seconds. The activists release a chimp, which straight away attacks and infects them. The disease is impossible to contain and inevitably spreads.

Related Topics:
Activist - Animal testing

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28 days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle courier who experienced an accident just as or before the epidemic began and had been in a coma, wakes up to find his hospital completely empty. Wandering around empty London streets he soon realizes that something completely devastating has happened. He unwittingly attracts the attention of some 'infected', and narrowly escapes death when two fellow survivors pick him up.

Related Topics:
Cillian Murphy - Coma

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The survivors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), tell Jim what has happened. Jim insists on trying to make a trip to visit his parents' house. The others reluctantly agree, but on arriving there Jim finds that his parents have committed suicide together. An infected — one of their former neighbors — attacks them, and Selena hacks Mark to death with a machete when she realizes he was wounded in the attack and likely to become infected as well. Jim accepts, however tentatively, that Selena will be more than willing to do the same for him should he be infected.

Related Topics:
Noah Huntley - Naomie Harris - Suicide

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The two of them venture out once again and are surprised to discover a set of working Christmas lights in the window of a flat. The building itself has been heavily barricaded from within against infected, and inside they meet Frank (Brendan Gleeson), a cabdriver, and Hannah (Megan Burns), his teenaged daughter. They have not seen anyone in weeks themselves, and are only too happy to have Jim and Selena as company.

Related Topics:
Brendan Gleeson - Megan Burns

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A pre-recorded looped radio broadcast reveals an area near Manchester which the military have secured. The four eventually decide to set out for it in Frank's cab. When they arrive at the area, they find a roadblock and a deserted military camp. While investigating, Frank is infected by a drop of tainted blood that accidentally lands in his eye. Jim is about to reluctantly kill Frank when Frank is riddled with bullets, ending his misery. The bullets were fired by the soldiers who have been transmitting the broadcast.

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Jim, Selena, and Hannah are taken to a mansion that has been turned into a base of operations by the small band of soldiers. Their leader is Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston). The mansion has hot water and a kitchen where food can be prepared — prepared food is a luxury that the trio have not experienced in a long time. Unfortunately, the soldiers are in their own way just as dangerous as the infected. Selena and Hannah are set up to be sexually enslaved. Jim tries to escape with the women but is captured. He narrowly escapes execution and in a grim series of incidents, he uses the infected as a weapon against the soldier-rapists and helps free the women. A short time afterward, the infected are shown to be slowly starving to death, their gaunt corpses strewn all about the grasslands and roadways.

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In the film's coda (shot on 35mm film, unlike the rest of the film), Jim re-awakens in a country cottage to find Selena and Hannah have managed to attract the attention of a jet pilot from another country. Their fate, along with the fate of the rest of the country, is left open-ended.

Related Topics:
Coda - 35mm film

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The DVD of the film provides a number of alternate endings.

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In the first, which is fully filmed, Jim is mortally wounded escaping from the soldiers. Selena and Hannah, having rushed Jim to a local hospital in hope that they might save his life, leave his body there; completing an eerie circle for Jim who began and ended the film alone in a deserted hospital. The same coda scene of potential rescue from the air then plays, although this time Jim is not present and, amusingly, has effectively been replaced by a chicken.

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In a second unfilmed alternate ending, the film picks up at the point where Frank is infected at the military roadblock near Manchester. The director animates the following largely with storyboards and voiceovers of the proposed script. This time the sub-plot involving the soldiers does not take place. In a radical turn, Jim, Selena and Hannah take Frank to a local research complex (the same complex in which the infected chimpanzees were being held in the first scene). Their goal is to attempt to find the cure for the virus, which the radio broadcast had suggested was nearby. In the end, the cure is suggested to be a complete blood transfusion. Jim sacrifices himself so that Hannah can have her father, Frank, back. Again, Jim is left alone in a deserted hospital. The director believed that this ending - namely the "cure" of a total blood transfusion - was unbelievable, given that it had already been established that a single drop of infected blood would infect. It is impossible to remove every drop of blood and its solid components from the body in a transfusion.

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