Not Quite 28 Years Later: When a Franchise Turns Formative

It’s a hazy Saturday evening in 2002 and we’re at friends of my dad’s and step mum’s for dinner. I like coming here because Dinoshi is Sri Lankan and makes the most incredible curry’s, with herbs and spices sent over to her from her mother and even as a ten year old, I’m already a spice fanatic. On top of this, Mike is one of the few adults I know that is obsessed with pop culture, the kind of pop culture that isn’t yet really accessible to me and I enjoy interrogating him about science fiction novels I see around his house that I’ll inevitably never read and video games I’ll probably never play. On this occasion my eye is caught by a bright red poster with the silhouette of a man and a city on it, with the words ’28 Days Later’ and two glowing red eyes above. The title and poster are vague enough that my young brain explodes with the possibilities of what this film could be about, each plot synopsis I imagine is more exciting than the last but before I can complete any of the fan fiction forming in my mind, I ask Mike what the film is about. He gives me a quick run through, an edit that he thinks will satisfy my curiosity enough without causing any kickback from my quite strict father- a man wakes up in an abandoned hospital, finds London to be empty but soon learns that there has been an outbreak of a virus that has turned everyone into zombies. ZOMBIES! My mind is blown.

“at that time, just knowing a film with such a thrilling concept existed was the purest joy, even if I had no access to it.”

It’s not quite 28 years Later now, it’s around 22 and a half and of course I’ve seen 28 Days Later countless times, I’ve seen it on the big screen, I’ve owned the DVD boxset with it’s sequel 28 Weeks Later, which I also saw in the cinema ahead of the third instalment. It’s safe to say that since I first saw that poster all those years ago, I’ve become a fan. But part of me feels like I’ve never been a bigger fan than I was in that moment, long before I knew who Cillian Murphy or Danny Boyle were, before I knew that there were short windows in the early hours of the morning where they could shoot the empty London streets and had to keep commuters and late night clubbers out of shot and certainly before I was old enough to understand the plot or message of the film. It feels like at that time, just knowing a film with such a thrilling concept existed was the purest joy, even if I had no access to it.

When I finally did see the first film, I was probably still too young. I lay in the living room with my stomach against the carpet as this provided a vantage point which was as close to the television screen as possible, staring at the sheer viscera unfolding in front of me as my mum and stepdad debated what would possibly happen next. My stepdad, a military man himself, predicted the horrible twist in the final act when it’s revealed that their safe haven is anything but as the trio face off against Christopher Eccleston’s squad of soldiers. From what I can remember, this was one of my earliest experiences of the common horror trope of humans being worse than the monsters and it left me feeling, well, queasy. It was an act of evil unfolding that I couldn’t quite comprehend, this wasn’t the simple evil I’d come to expect from movies and there was an understanding within myself that what I had seen was something more distinctly adult and complex than I was used to. Maybe I’d stick to Star Wars.

The cultural impact of the film meant a plethora of zombie related content over the next several years and by the time 28 Weeks Later rolled around I gave it, like many people, only a cursory glance, a distracted teenage bedroom DVD viewing and a conclusion that the film was fine but not as good as the original. I remember rumours of another sequel or perhaps a prequel all framing a different look on this world based on whatever ’28’ pre-fixed time period they decided to opt for. But time passed, a thousand seasons of ‘The Walking Dead’ aired but nothing from Danny Boyle or Alex Garland, or indeed anyone else, materialised in the ’28’ world, despite the amount of times I found myself checking on Wikipedia.

Fast forward to 2025 and we’re all living in the wake of a global pandemic, an ever increasingly volatile state of geo-politics and also with the news that Boyle and Garland are returning for not one but (hopefully) a trilogy of films set in the ’28’ universe. There is much speculation on how the events of the last 20 years will shape the upcoming film, whether or not the first sequel will be considered canon and whether or not Cillian Murphy will return and later if he is in fact playing a rake-thin infected that is spotted in the trailer. For myself however, on top of all this I found myself considering how my own relationship with the franchise had developed.

Franchise cinema often capitalises on both the sentiment of viewers from previous instalments and from the passage of time between each entry. The ’28’ series has so far disregarded the notion of a close sequel, refreshing the cast of characters with each movie, providing an almost anthology element to the series. This has led to a need for the audience to bring their own semblance of attachment to the films. Undoubtedly this has been made easier by our shared experience of the pandemic, no longer do the empty city street scenes seen in the original movie seem as alien as they once did and there’s a different framing on wondering how we all might fare and feel during a life-altering outbreak. The latest film does show us something however that we haven’t experienced, a look down the road at how an event such as this will alter the world forever. In this film we see a quarantined Britain with a glimpse of the outside world operating as normal, whatever normal now looks like in this universe. Whilst it seems after our own pandemic that life has seemingly gone back to ‘normal’, if we look a bit deeper I would argue that it hasn’t. I have seen vast change in people and perspective in my own life that has already undoubtedly shaped my life in staggering ways. The covid pandemic was the launch pad for misinformation entering the mainstream and this hasn’t let up since but unlike the ‘rage’ virus this isn’t spread by mistake. We are being pushed into polarisation and it this I feel that we will be seeing and feeling the effects of for years to come. 

 28 Years Later shows us a host of new characters who seem have been moulded in all sorts of strange and varying ways by the various events that have engulfed them, whether it be the pragmatism of the islanders, the meditation of Dr. Kelson or the central figure of Spike, a boy born into the wreckage of a world he never knew or will know. The thrill of these type of apocalyptic movies is pondering how we ourselves might fare in such circumstances and that is still present here, particularly with our audience conduit Cillian Murphy’s ‘Jim’ not yet making an appearance, however we are told this is to come. Jim was our emotional gateway into the world of the ‘rage’ virus as the themes of isolation and confusion in a changing world were explored. As the film goes on we see him reject the corruption of spirit offered by Christopher Eccleston’s ‘Major Henry West’ and his men, yet it acts as a catalyst for him to adopt his own callousness and savagery which he inevitably needs to survive.  The emotional driver of this film comes in its human story, of a boy trying to go beyond the means available to save a parent with a serious illness and this I feel may be what resonates deepest within us, as we see some real light shone into the humanity of these films for arguably the first time. In a similar arc, Spike also encounters a figure on his journey who offers him a new perspective on the world around him yet this time it is something much softer, a lesson in love and loss that seems to refine Spike and strip away the last of his boyish trepidation. Lastly, Spike meets another figure who we are made to feel may be less of a positive influence on him and may be our gateway into a darker message of morality that will come within this trilogy.

It’s not easy for me to say this and I mean it purely in the way required for this metaphor to work but it is this final character which I feel best represents my relationship with the film, as he is presented to us as an amalgamation of pop culture from his childhood, twisted by the trauma he has experienced. I entered these films as a young boy desperate to be older, convinced that a more exciting future lay ahead even if it was just in the movies, music and other media that I craved access to. As the third is released, I find myself looking back more and more whether it be to unpack my own life or just in examining the pop culture I’ve lived through, on both counts looking for something I might have missed the first time around. My first memories of these films are of not knowing and that is ironically where I find myself again now after the first instalment of the new trilogy. I don’t know where these films are heading or where I’ll be when they find me but I still have a belief that sometimes now knowing can be the best bit of all.