‘28 Days Later’: Why One of Its Scariest Scenes Is Also Its Saddest

15 years ago today, American audiences got their first look at Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Well, most of America at least. The film had opened at the Sundance Film Festival the previous January, then played the Tribeca Film Festival in May that same year, not to mention having played in its native England. By the time it opened wide in the States, its reputation as a terrifying reinvention of the zombie genre was well established. It’s a reputation that was well-earned.

Made for around $8 million dollars, it was Boyle’s comeback feature after the abject failure of The Beach  and a return to his Shallow Grave horror roots. The film tracks a viral outbreak in London, where animal-liberation activists attempt to free experimented-on chimpanzees from their cages, only to discover far too late that the chimps have been infected with a rage-inducing virus. Though 28 Days Later plays out like a zombie movie and follows the patterns closely enough to qualify, it’s not strictly a zombie movie. The rage virus infects the activists, who within seconds become aggressive, mindless, and violent. The speed with which the infected turn — and the physical speed with which they move — gave rise to the concept of “fast zombies” (yes, I know they’re not real zombies, I just said that), and all the countless fast-vs-slow zombie debates that followed.

What’s kept 28 Days Later as an enduring and influential movie in the horror genre wasn’t just the bright idea to turn zombies fast, however. There was Boyle’s canny and brilliant filmmaking, a prodigious cast, and intoxicating music that help it endure. Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, and Christopher Eccleston all got their big breakthroughs on American shores here, while Brendan Gleeson was in the midst of a run of Brit indies and character-actor parts that would build the basis of his career. All four of them, plus young Megan Burns as Hannah, give strong, committed performances. The film was shot on digital video by Dogme 95 graduate Anthony Dod Mantle, who used the still-experimental digital medium to play with speed and immediacy, even as it gave the world of the film a grimy, blasted-out visual signature. The score, composed by John Murphy — his first collaboration with Boyle, ahead of his equally brilliant work on Sunshine — combined with tracks from the likes of Brian Eno to create an atmosphere that moves from dread to kinetic action to ethereal elegy. Simply put, it’s one of the best-crafted horror movies you’ll ever see.

It also features perhaps the saddest scene in modern horror history. Certainly it’s the single moment that comes to my mind when it comes to horror that makes me sad. The script — by Annihilation and Ex Machina writer/director Alex Garland — is your classic apocalypse-survivors tale, with Jim (Murphy) waking up in the hospital to find that the world as he knew it has ended and London has emptied out. Amid periodic attacks from the Infected, he partners up with Selena (Harris) and eventually they find Frank (Gleeson) and Hannah (Burns), a father and daughter hiding out in a high-rise apartment. The four of them embark on a harrowing journey to Manchester, the source of a recorded message that’s been broadcasting. They go through the hellscape of a tunnel teeming with Infected and make it out, stronger together, a family unit of source. Frank is the friendly dad, fond of a nip every now and then but a good man and a brave father. Jim had already been lucky enough to find Selena (companionship? love?), and now in Frank and Hannah he’s basically rebuilt society, in micro, with this four-person unit. In a movie about the swift and terrifyingly bloody dissolution of modern society as we know it, Boyle has delivered something like optimism.

The four get all the way to the blockade at Manchester, where this message has supposedly been emanating from, but they find no one. And while waiting for someone, anyone to make contact, Frank frustratedly shoos away a crow that’s been picking at the bloody corpse of a dead Infected at the top of a fence. The crow takes off, and Boyle gives us an ostentatious blood’s-eye-view of a droplet that falls from the corpse … directly … into … Frank’s … eye.

Splink

And in that instant, we know.

Because Garland’s script has been so unwaveringly faithful to the rules of this world — infection happens within minutes; there is no cure; there is no alternative but to kill what was once human — and because Boyle’s visual language has been so unrelentingly furious, the audience connects every dot from the instant the blood hits Gleeson. We know he’s infected, we know he’s gone; we know Hannah has just lost her father, Frank has just lost his daughter, and this ramshackle family unit who we all had just started to hope against hope might make it through this whole thing together — that’s all over. We also know that Frank is going to have to die, and quick.

Gleeson’s work in this minute of film, as he works through his disbelief at his impending death and his sorrow over losing his daughter, while at the same time trying to push her away and protect her, all while ramping up rapidly to rage-zombie levels, is impressive and instinctual. In the meantime, Boyle has sprung a trap on us, getting us to let our guard down and now snatching us up with lightning speed. By the time Selena is protectively clasping at Hannah and screaming at Jim to kill Frank, our nerves are done for. But at the same time, our hearts have just been shattered.

The killing of Frank comes as another surprise, and with it, the film takes a turn into its harrowing final third, which often feels like another movie entirely. Which is honestly only appropriate. Frank’s death is in every way an ending, and a terribly sad one at that. We need to see the rest of Jim and Selena and Hannah’s story, of course. But happy ending we’d allowed ourselves to hope for even though we knew better is now over.

A lot of horror movies can scare you. Some can disgust you. Many can delight you, even without your being a sadistic monster. Very few horror movies can deliver a moment as simultaneously frightening and sad as that single moment when Frank gets infected. It’s the work of a master filmmaker, a talented screenwriter, and an empathetic cast. Fifteen years later, I’ve yet to be quite so affected.

Where to stream '28 Days Later'