28 Days Later (sometimes stylized with an ellipsis as 28 Days Later...) is a 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. It stars Cillian Murphy as a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to discover that the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus has caused the breakdown of society. Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns, and Brendan Gleeson appear in supporting roles.
Garland took inspiration from George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead film series and John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. Filming took place in various locations in the United Kingdom in 2001. The crew filmed for brief periods during early mornings and temporarily closed streets in London to capture recognizable and typically busy areas when they were deserted. John Murphy composed an original soundtrack for the film, with other instrumental songs by Brian Eno, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and other artists.
28 Days Later was released on 1 November 2002 in the United Kingdom by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It received generally positive reviews and was a commercial success. Grossing $82.8 million worldwide on a budget of $8 million, it became one of the most profitable horror films of 2002. Reviewers praised Boyle's direction, the cast's performances, Garland's screenplay, the atmosphere and soundtrack.
Despite Boyle not considering it a zombie film, 28 Days Later is credited with reinvigorating the genre and influencing a revival in it a decade after its release, with its fast-running infected and character-driven drama. It has been featured in several "best-of" film lists. The film's success launched its titular film series, featuring three further instalments: 28 Weeks Later (2007), 28 Years Later (2025), and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026). A wider franchise also includes the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath (2007), and the comic book series 28 Days Later (2009–2011).
Plot
A group of animal rights activists infiltrate a laboratory in Cambridge which houses abnormally aggressive chimpanzees. Despite a scientist warning that the chimpanzees are "infected" with "rage", an activist frees one; it attacks her and, within seconds of exposure, she succumbs to the virus. She immediately attacks the others, and the virus spreads rapidly across Great Britain, resulting in total societal collapse.
Twenty-eight days later, bicycle courier Jim, who had a traffic accident and fell into a coma before the outbreak, wakes in St Thomas' Hospital in London to find it deserted. Leaving the hospital, Jim wanders the empty streets of London, discovers newspapers headlining a mass evacuation, and eventually enters a church and witnesses the aftermath of a massacre, presumably caused by the infected people. An infected priest and members of the public appear and chase after Jim, but he is rescued by survivors Selena and Mark, who take him to their refuge in a Tube station shop.
At Jim's request, the group travels on foot to his parents' house in Deptford, where he learns that they have died by suicide, leaving a note instructing him to "never wake up". When dusk settles in, the group decides to stay the night. Staying up, Jim reminisces over family memories and lights a candle, drawing the infected neighbours to the house. Mark is infected while eliminating them, forcing Selena to kill him. Jim and Selena make their way up Balfron Tower after seeing a makeshift signal lamp in a flat belonging to cab driver Frank and his young daughter Hannah. Frank plays them a military radio broadcast offering protection and "salvation from infection" at a blockade outside Manchester. Frank plans to take Hannah to the blockade, and the four agree to travel together. Reaching Manchester, they find the blockade deserted. Frank, frustrated, kicks a gate on which a dead infected body is balanced. A drop of blood from the corpse falls into Frank's eye, infecting him. As he warns the others to keep their distance, hidden soldiers appear and shoot him dead as he turns.
The soldiers bring Jim, Selena and Hannah to a heavily fortified country house under the command of Major Henry West, treat their guests to a tour and banquet and introduces him to "Private Mailer", an infected soldier kept chained up for observation. However, the sanctuary turns out to be a ruse; West reveals to Jim that his broadcast was intended to lure female survivors into sexual slavery to maintain his troops' morale, giving them faith in a future where the human race survives. Jim and Sergeant Farrell refuse to go along with this scheme, so West orders them to be imprisoned. While chained, Farrell tells Jim that the infection has not spread across the Atlantic and that Britain has been quarantined from the rest of the world. Two soldiers shoot Farrell and then argue, allowing Jim to escape into the woods. Jim notices a jet contrail in the sky, showing proof that the outside world is still active.
After luring West away from the mansion with a siren, Jim returns and frees Private Mailer in order to infect and kill the remaining soldiers. Corporal Mitchell attempts to abduct Selena, but Jim kills him. Jim, Selena, and Hannah attempt to escape in Frank's cab, but West, who has hidden in the back seat, shoots Jim in the stomach. Hannah retaliates by putting the cab in reverse, causing Mailer to burst through the rear window and drag West out before mauling him to death as the car drives away.
Another twenty-eight days later, Jim recovers at a remote cottage in Cumbria, where the infected are shown lying on the roads, dying of starvation. As a Hawker Hunter jet flies overhead, Jim, Selena, and Hannah unfurl a huge cloth banner spelling the word "HELLO". All three survivors wave at the jet, and wonder among themselves if the pilot has spotted them.
Cast
Cillian Murphy as Jim, a bicycle courier who was previously in a coma Naomie Harris as Selena, a survivor in London Brendan Gleeson as Frank, a taxi driver Megan Burns as Hannah, Frank's young daughter Christopher Eccleston as Major Henry West, the leader of the soldiers Noah Huntley as Mark, a fellow survivor with Selena Stuart McQuarrie as Sergeant Farrell Ricci Harnett as Corporal Mitchell Leo Bill as Private Jones Luke Mably as Private Clifton Junior Laniyan as Private Bell Ray Panthaki as Private Bedford Sanjay Rambaruth as Private Davis Marvin Campbell as Private Mailer
Additionally, Alex Palmer, Bindu De Stoppani, and Jukka Hiltunen portray the animal liberation activists, while David Schneider portrays a scientist at the laboratory. Christopher Dunne and Emma Hitching appear as Jim's parents. Toby Sedgwick plays an infected priest encountered by Jim. Sedgwick would later return to the series in a behind the scenes role, acting as the movement coach for 28 Years Later (2025).
Production Development Early influences on writer Alex Garland included the George A. Romero films Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978), which he loved as a child. Garland claimed to have largely forgotten about the zombie genre until he played the video game Resident Evil (1996), which reminded him how much he loved zombies after "having not really encountered zombies for quite a while". Director Danny Boyle liked Garland's screenplay for a proposed zombie film, having directed the 2000 film adaptation of Garland's 1996 novel The Beach.
Rather than portraying zombies as supernatural beings, the film's rage virus was conceived as a biological contagion. Boyle and Garland intended the virus to amplify an inherent aspect of human nature—psychological aggression—depicting rage as an uncontrollable viral force intrinsic to humanity rather than merely a physical infection. This was designed to serve as a metaphor for contemporary social rage, including road rage, air rage, and other everyday aggressive behaviours. On the DVD audio commentary, Garland said the idea of Britain being under quarantine was developed during production, replacing an earlier conception of the outbreak as a worldwide contagion that included a discarded idea of infection boarding a plane to the United States; he linked the quarantine framing to contemporary UK anxieties about BSE (mad cow disease) and foot-and-mouth disease.
Garland described the supermarket sequence as a deliberate nod to Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and the chained Infected as a nod to the character "Bub" in Day of the Dead. Garland said he was thinking of the plantation dinner sequence from Apocalypse Now Redux when writing the soldiers' dinner scene.
Producer Andrew Macdonald had access to funding from the National Lottery and pitched it to Universal Pictures, who declined to support it. Budget constraints proved to be an issue, with Christopher Eccleston having to take an emergency pay cut. In June 2001, it was reported that Fox Searchlight Pictures had picked up for co-financing as well as worldwide distribution.
Boyle identified John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids as Garland's original inspiration for the story.
Five months after the film was released in Europe, video game publisher NovaLogic hosted a graffiti competition in a cross-promotion with the game Devastation (2003). The connection was owed mainly to the similar theme of a devastated world. The prizes consisted of signed screenplay copies and posters along with DVDs. For the Infected, Boyle took inspiration from real-life diseases, particularly Ebola, with aspects of rabies.
Casting On the DVD commentary, Boyle explains that with the aim of preserving the suspension of disbelief, relatively unknown actors were cast in the film. Cillian Murphy had starred primarily in small independent films, while Naomie Harris had acted on British television as a child, and Megan Burns had only one previous film credit. However, Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson were well-known character actors. Murphy originally auditioned for the role with a modern Received Pronunciation accent, as Jim was written to be English. However, during filming, Boyle and Murphy decided to revert to the actor's natural accent, and rewrote the character as Irish. James McAvoy auditioned for a role as an Infected.
Filming
The film features scenes set in normally bustling parts of London, such as Westminster Bridge, Piccadilly Circus, Horse Guards Parade and Oxford Street. To depict these locations as desolate, the film crew closed off sections of street for minutes at a time, usually on Sunday mornings. They typically had around 45 minutes after dawn to shoot the locations devoid of members of the public and traffic, with closures lasting only "90 seconds or two minutes" at a time while traffic was held back by volunteer marshals (students and friends).
The majority of the film (except for the final sequence when the military plane finds Jim, Selena, and Hannah, which was shot on 35mm film) was shot on Canon XL1 digital video (DV) cameras, which were smaller and more manoeuvrable than traditional film cameras, which would have been impractical on such brief shoots. Boyle said the early London sequences avoided "litter[ing] the world with corpses", instead emphasising a more symbolic emptiness and atmosphere. The scenes of the empty M1 motorway were also filmed within limited periods; Boyle said police created a "rolling block" in both directions to produce a temporary corridor of empty road, giving the crew seven or eight minutes to shoot using multiple cameras.
For the London scene in which Jim walks by an overturned double-decker bus, the film crew placed the bus on its side and removed it when the shot was finished, all within about 15–20 minutes. The crew had asked Westminster City Council for permission to place the bus outside Downing Street, which was denied; when they arrived there at 4am and nobody from the council was present, they placed the bus there anyway.