28 Days Later is a 2002 British horror film by Danny Boyle about a coma patient waking into a London emptied by rage.
At a Glance
- Director: Danny Boyle
- Writer: Alex Garland
- Producer: Andrew Macdonald
- Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Christopher Eccleston, Noah Huntley
- Release: November 1, 2002 (United Kingdom); June 27, 2003 (United States)
- Runtime: 113 minutes
- Studio: DNA Films; distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
- Music: John Murphy
- Budget and gross: about $8 million; about $82.8 million worldwide
- Franchise: 28 Days Later series, continued by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)
Overview
In 2002 the zombie film was close to dormant. 28 Days Later woke it up. Boyle and Garland never call their monsters zombies; they are living people infected with “rage,” and they do not shamble. They sprint. That one change, together with grainy digital photography and images of a deserted London, made the film feel immediate and new. It owes clear debts to George A. Romero and to John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, but its real subject is what survivors do to each other once society is gone. It became a sleeper hit on both sides of the Atlantic and launched a franchise that is still running.
Plot
Animal rights activists break into a Cambridge research lab and free a chimpanzee infected with an experimental virus called rage. It attacks within seconds, and the infection spreads across Britain.
Twenty-eight days later, bicycle courier Jim wakes from a coma in an abandoned London hospital. He wanders across an empty Westminster Bridge and past Piccadilly Circus, then is attacked by the infected in a church and rescued by two survivors, Selena and Mark. Selena explains the rules bluntly: anyone infected turns within seconds, and must be killed at once. At Jim’s parents’ house in Deptford, he finds they have taken their own lives. An attack that night leaves Mark infected, and Selena kills him without hesitation.
Jim and Selena meet taxi driver Frank and his teenage daughter, Hannah, in a tower block. Frank has picked up a looping military broadcast promising salvation at a roadblock outside Manchester. The four drive north in Frank’s cab, sharing a rare moment of calm in the countryside. At the blockade, a drop of infected blood falls into Frank’s eye, and soldiers shoot him as he turns.
Spoiler: The Ending
The soldiers take the survivors to a fortified country house commanded by Major Henry West. The promise of salvation is a lie: West reveals that he lured survivors so his men would have women, and he intends to give them Selena and Hannah. Jim refuses, is marched off for execution, and escapes. Returning in a storm, he frees an infected soldier the unit had chained up, and the house becomes a slaughterhouse. Jim kills the soldier trying to take Selena, but West shoots him as they flee in the cab. Another twenty-eight days later, Jim recovers in a Cumbrian cottage while the infected starve. He, Selena and Hannah lay out a huge fabric sign reading “HELLO,” and a jet flies overhead.
Production
Garland drew on Romero’s films and The Day of the Triffids. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle shot much of the film on Canon XL-1 digital video cameras, a choice that gave it a raw, documentary look and made it possible to film quickly in public places. To capture an empty London, the crew closed streets for minutes at a time in the early morning, including around Westminster Bridge. John Murphy’s score, especially the building guitar piece “In the House – In a Heartbeat,” became one of the most reused horror themes of the decade.
Place in Franchise
The film was followed by 28 Weeks Later (2007), directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, then by Boyle and Garland’s return in 28 Years Later (2025) and Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026), which Think Horror reviewed in The Infected Aren’t the Scariest Thing Anymore. Its sprinting infected helped set the template for the fast-zombie wave that followed, including the 2004 remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, even though Boyle himself resists calling it a zombie film.
Trivia
- The film is sometimes styled with an ellipsis as 28 Days Later…
- Cillian Murphy’s breakout lead role came here.
- Naomie Harris plays Selena, the pragmatic survivor who teaches Jim the rules.
- US theaters added an alternate ending after the credits during its run.
- A graphic novel, 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, and a comic series expanded the story.
- It grossed roughly ten times its budget worldwide.