28 Days Later: The Infection Begins Here

Fast zombies, slow grief, and a perfectly timed apocalypse

Jun 20, 2025

What do you do when your last movie bombed, your best friend won’t talk to you, and the biggest star in the world just Leo’d all over your indie sensibility?

If you’re Danny Boyle, you grab a MiniDV camera, shut down London at 4am with no permits, cast a guy no one’s heard of, and make the scariest $8 million movie of the 2000s.

28 Days Later isn’t just a horror film—it’s a comeback, a cultural reset, and the beginning of the fast zombie era, and maybe Stephen King is responsible

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LISTEN TO THE FULL EP

JIM GOT IN HIS STEPS

Jim walked approximately 9.68 kilometers (or about 6.02 miles) across central London

St Thomas’ Hospital
Westminster Bridge
Whitehall & Horse Guards Parade
Trafalgar Square
Bank of England
Piccadilly Circus
St Paul’s Cathedral

That’s a lot of walking for a guy who just woke up from a coma, with no water, no shoes.

NOT DEAD YET - THE ALT ENDING

In the original 28 Days Later ending, Jim dies after being shot during the escape—Selena and Hannah leave him behind, driving into an uncertain future. But after poor test screenings, Boyle replaced it with a “hopeful farmhouse” ending.

SHOT ON MINI DV and WHY IT MATTERS

“We shot it on a Canon XL1, so it was grainy, raw — it felt like it had been shot for the news.”
—Danny Boyle,

The Mini DV camera at the time was a Prosumer Camera. Plus, unlike bulky film cameras, it was nimble, quick, and quiet enough to shoot in the real streets of London at dawn. Also, the cheap cost of film stock and the cameras opened up many possibilities of creativity with their shots, utilizing up to 8 XL-1s at a time to cover many angles. Also, this allowed them to try riskier shots they wouldn’t dare try with a $50,000 camera. A notable example is the blood droplet from the crow’s view infecting Frank.

For the 3rd film in the franchise, 28 YEARS LATER, Boyle says he shot on phones, a drone, and a goat, and this shot with 28 iPhones looks like he will be reinventing the genre's look again.

RESIDENT EVIL AS INSPIRATION

What do you think? See for yourself

How Boyle cast his Zombies

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A CHEEKY PREMIERE

I couldn’t find many images from the premiere, but they really went all out with the theme. Thankfully no infected were let inside.

ZOMBIE KILLER TO ROCK STAR

Megan Burns, who played Hannah, made her way into the music industry after the movie and transformed into Betty Curse.

Her highest charting entry was at #116 in the UK charts.

PRODUCER MOLLY’S CORNER

Producer Molly watched the wrong 28 Days but fell into a deep hole in which she discovered a pattern she is dubbing "The Sandra Bullock to Cillian Murphy pipeline." Cillian seems to be choose movies based on Sandra's body of work. Based on her latest filmography, could this be Cillian Murphy's next project?

UNSPOOLED RECOMMENDS

Dead Set (Netflix) Charlie Brooker’s pre-Black Mirror zombie miniseries. Imagine 28 Days Later happens… during Big Brother.
Cure (1997) (Criterion Channel) Slow-burn Japanese horror
The Girl With All the Gifts (2016) A quiet companion piece to 28 Days Later, and criminally underseen.