Naw, they were running awayfrom theinfecteds.
Just saw the movie, loved it, but don’t see it again. The biggest qualm I have is:
-SPOILERS (decided to note this incase the tags don’t work; first time using them) -
Why didn’t the zombies attack one another?
Also, I thought the 3rd act was great, with the soldiers desire to “use” the women. It was a really interesting take.
Anyways, good film.
Well, y’know, the disease did not operate like a feasible disease should. We can cast this aside by saying, “it was genetically engineered as a weapon,” certainly.
We can also cast it aside by saying, “it made sense in a dramatic kind of way, and helped the movie along.”
I’m not picky. The best kind of “survival horror” films are those in which the situation at hand is not “monsters” or “zombies” so much as they are a kind of disaster, a natural force. The whole point isn’t to watch the monster eat people, or the zombies eat brains, or whatever… so much as it is to see what this does to the PEOPLE.
And that’s what this movie was about. How do a variety of people react to the fact that Western Civilization has gone from apex to zip-ola in 28 days? How does it affect them, inside? How does it affect the ways they relate to each other?
And this movie delivered that, in spades. Sure, lotsa creepy shocks, action set-pieces, scaaaary moments… but this movie not only scared me, creeped me out… but it made me think. I liked it a lot.
Although we had a bad moment after the movie. My wife and daughter had to use the restroom before we went out to the car, right? So I went and did that myself, and then stood outside the restrooms, waiting for them to come out.
Shortly thereafter, my wife came out, and we waited together for our daughter.
Shortly thereafter… this woman came out.
She lurched as she walked. She didn’t have complete control of her right leg, and she lurched and stumbled, stiff-legged, throwing her arms out around her, to some extent, for balance, as she moved. Her mouth hung open, slackly.
She lurched towards us–
–and then turned sharply to the right. Her date was waiting for her. She was just some woman with cerebral palsy, or some sort of neurological disorder, that’s all. Our daughter came out a moment later.
We did not do anything, didn’t freak, didn’t scream, didn’t embarrass ourselves, or the woman in question.
But we talked about that moment ALL the freakin’ way home…
Ive been waiting for this movie for I dont know how long now. Danny Boyle is a friggin genius, and Alex Garland is even more so. I love the work both of these guys have done, Ive been counting the days… Anyway, I was not disappointed, we were trying to figure out all the symptoms of the disease, were they trying to infect some and eat some, or were they just trying to infect? I cant help but wonder if this would have been better in an art house, many of the jokes, I was the only one laughing at, which is sad because they were really funny in a dark sort of way, yet still added to the setup (the grafiti in the church).
According to IMDB:
The last words said in the film (by the aircraft pilot) are spoken in Finnish. He says, “Would you send a helicopter.”
Huh. Well, that is helpful.
Still, that’s rather mean to the audience.
Unless they’re Finnish. 
There’s lots of nice features in the UK DVD. The film was originally released earlier in the year.
Extras: Audio commentary by Director Danny Boyle and Screenwriter Alex Garland. 7 deleted scenes with optional audio commentary by Director Danny Boyle and Screenwriter Alex Garland (13 mins). Alternate ending with optional audio commentary by Director Danny Boyle and Screenwriter Alex Garland (3 mins). Radical alternate ending animated storyboards narrated by Director Danny Boyle and Screenwriter Alex Garland (11 mins). ‘Pure Rage: The Making Of 28 Days Later’ featurette (25 mins). Production photo gallery with audio commentary by Director Danny Boyle (18 mins). Polaroid photo gallery with audio commentary by Director Danny Boyle (4 mins). Theatrical trailer (2 mins). Teaser trailer (2 mins). Animated storyboards for UK website (2 mins). Jacknife Lee music video (6 mins).
The best is however the two alternate endings One of which is fully storyboarded and puts things on their head with regard to the conclusion.
Next up on the disc, we have an alternate ending with optional audio commentary by Director Danny Boyle and Screenwriter Alex Garland. This runs for 3 minutes and, once again, the content isn’t up to much, but the commentary is pretty insightful and well worth a listen for fans. Although the shots, takes and dialogue are pretty much identical between this ending and the one in the final cut, there is still a significant change as far as the plot goes.
There’s also an animated storyboard sequence for a ‘radical’ alternate ending narrated by Boyle and Garland. This is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound - lasting 11 minutes, this is a terrific extra that will undoubtedly be overlooked by some. Basically, this takes the film in a completely new direction from the halfway point - this is drastically different stuff and very worthy of inclusion on the disc. While the storyboards play, stage directions are read out by Garland himself while Boyle reads the dialogue for all the characters. There was one very major plothole for this ending that should be spotted by all viewers the moment it arrives on-screen. It remains a mystery how this error was undetected by Boyle for so long - the fact that such detailed storyboards were created in the first place indicates that it took them a bit of time to realise their mistake. Amusingly, Boyle pauses the storyboards when the plothole in question crops ups to deliver a little message on the topic.
Deuteros Could you please elaborate on the alternate endings? What were they? They sound very interesting.
Hey, Deuteros, I too would be very interested in hearing about the alternate endings. At first I figured the movie was going to end with the freeze frame. Then I figured when the jet flew over, they were going to get bombed, but that seemed a bit too “Night of the Living Dead”, so I’m glad they didn’t. Also, would that little “plot point” you keep speaking of be where Jim runs threw the secret door in the mansion to get away from the infected without ever having been shown it? Just wondering.
Also, as for skaterboarder87, why is it so hard for people who see zombie films to understand that zombies recognize other zombies? It seems in every conversation about them, people ask “Why don’t the zombies eat other zombies?” I talked a bit about it before in an earlier post, but it seems in this case, the RAGE virus seems to have a “reproductive” push. It not only concerns the infected with survival in terms of finding food and shelter and the like, but also in spreading the disease. There are two cases when this is seen, but the best example again, is at the end where the infected soldier that was set free jumped on its first victim and, instead of tearing him apart, vomited blood all over him, and then left him to become another infected. It wasn’t until this was done that the two of them worked together to find “food”.
Also, most zombie movies tend to involve some sort of virus causing the epidemic, so it’s just always been a thought in my mind that normal humans are detectable as such, but those who become zombies have now mutated into something new, and thus, other zombies recognize them as such, and leave them alone/work with them. Hence, zombies don’t eat zombies.
Something else no one’s talked about that I liked in this particular movie was the use of pan shots and cut shots. For example after pilfering the convenience store, there’s a great of the car driving off. It looks like they’re driving threw a field of strange vegetables, but when you look at it, you realize that the shot is threw the store window and that the field is really just a painting of the landscape. They did about three shots like this in the movie, I thought they looked really great.
And personally, I didn’t mind the last third of the film. It could have had a bit more of an interesting twist, because from watching the previews, I had a completely different idea of what the house was all about (it seemed like it was a haven, but full of crazy people, which would have been interesting as well). Still, I thought it worked.
Also, there was one thing I was thinking was going to be an interesting plot twist but never came up, so I’m curious if anyone else thought this as well. We see several times after he wakes up, Jim has a big scar on the back of his head. For some reason, I just got the notion that, due to his injury and whatnot, they were hinting that he had a portion of his brain removed. Obviously nothing serious, but I was suspecting at some point in time, him becoming infected, yet being alright due to this. Kinda glad that didn’t get used as well, but it was something I thought about.
Okay, anybody who’s read this far into the thread has been warned enough about spoilers, so here goes:
The disease annoyed me, for reasons some others have stated; the speed with which it takes effect and the behaviour it manifests. Any disease that took effect 20 seconds after exposure couldn’t possibly get out of one city. The infected don’t seem able to operate cars or airplanes, so the fastest it can spread is running speed. The newspapers Jim finds hint at a mass evacuation, so I don’t buy the whole quarantine angle. Even then, there was more than enough time for people outside of London to get news reports saying “New Disease Spreads Through Blood; Avoid Anyone Acting Really, Really Angry”.
The behaviour of the infected makes no sense. If it is “rage”, then why aren’t they savagely smashing objects and each other? What’s the point of running up to someone, spewing blood on them, then moving on? I can’t quite suspend my disbelief.
Ther infection of the father is another dramatic scene that makes no sense. You’d think he would know enough not to approach dead bodies under any conditions, including scaring away a scavenging bird. Also, if the body had been there for any length of time (at least 48 hours), lividity would set in and the blood would be a gloppy brown coagulated mess. It’s unclear how long the virus could stay alive in a corpse.
As for the infected soldier being kept alive as an experiment, I’d say he’ll die of dehydration (what with all the blood-spewing) long before he starves.
Are there gun shops in London? Seems to me having some low-caliber (to minimize blood splatter) handguns and rifles would be handier and safer than swinging clubs and bats.
The soldiers seem like a pretty disciplined bunch (we see it in their well-organized defenses) so I don’t buy that they turn into savages so rapidly. The officer seems like a pretty cold-blooded, logical fellow. It must occur to him that raping the women risks injuring them (and affecting their ability to conceive children) which defeats the whole “rebuild society” thing.
Other minor nitpicks include Jim knowing about the car accident that landed him in the hospital. I don’t find it plausible that someone coming out of a coma would have clear memories of what put him in the coma in the first place. Had there been a scene at the hospital where he finds and reads his own medical chart, I could buy that.
I did get a certain sang-froid chuckle at the fact that it was an animal-rights activist that started the epidemic and was its first victim. Take THAT, Green Party!
The “Irradiated” joke make me chuckle, too.
The movie was interesting in a way, but I couldn’t recommend it except to diehard zombie fans.
You have heard about our gun laws, haven’t you?
I can’t comment on the rest as, to be honest, it is so long since I saw it I cannot remember such details.
My only problem with this film was the baseball bat Jim carried around. Where did he get a baseball bat in Great Britain?
I’ve spent some time in the UK, and never once did I see a baseball bat! Jim should have been using a cricket bat.
That’s plenty fast enough- and remember, the virus doesn’t actually seem to kill very fast, if at all. We see infected dying at the end of the movie, but whether of dehydration, starvation, or the virus, we don’t know. And that is, as the title of the movie tells us :), 28 days after the plague begins. So there’s no reason that, say, a person infected in one town or village couldn’t wander out into the countryside, and eventually stumble into another town or city, where they’ll begin the cycle of infection again. Considering the fact that this disease could probably infect an entire village in one night, it doesn’t seem implausible that within a day or two after the release of the monkeys, we could have thousands of infected roaming the countryside. Eventually, they will reach other cities.
The way I see it, the outbreak would have had had a few phases to it. In the earliest phase, the emphasis was on containing the outbreak within small parts of Britain. At this point, most people would be thinking of the Rage like we thought of the SARS scare at its height - troubling, but it’s happening far away and the authorites are dealing with it. Society would continue to function more or less as normal - indeed, the characters seemed to allude to this.
As the internal quarantee began to fail, people would being panicking and evacuating- and again, we see this described in the movie.
Finally, the thing we see only hinted at in the movie would happen - the other nations would decide that accepting British refugees posed an unacceptable risk, and would quarantine that fair isle, whatever the cost may be. (Sorry, Mr. Churchill.) I find it amusing to speculate on what Bush’s speech in that situation would sound like.
As to just avoiding the infected - yeah, that’s sort of an obvious thing to do. But it’s easier said than done - the movie makes clear that there are practical difficulties, worse than those involved with avoiding a conventional assailant. The infected cannot be deterred by the threat of death, cannot be reasoned with, are willing to endure considerable injury to reach their victims (the window scene), and even brief contact with an Infected person is extraordinarily dangerous. Thus, conventional methods for avoiding, or fighting off, a human attacker sort of fall apart.
He was behaving irrationally. Living in a biohazard/war zone/post-apocalyptic nightmare might make a person do that, I think. 
The Nazis were also well-disciplined and rational - history shows us that rational, intelligent people can do some pretty horrible things, and justify them to themselves. And as for the rape thing - I don’t think that was the major’s intent, exactly. More like keeping them prisoner and trying to Stockholm or intimidate the women into going along with it.
This doesn’t seem so far fetched to me. Rage is just a name, after all (and a fitting one considering what happens to the people infected by it).
While we did see a couple instances of the zombies simply vomiting on someone else and then moving along, those were unusual circumstances. As was said earlier, the soldier-zombie that Jim sets free initially infects another soldier, but then they tear that other guy apart in the kitchen. Maybe the zombies retain enough intelligence to think “I’m way outnumbered, if I turn someone else into a zombie, I won’t get killed.” I think that everything about the disease itself is ambiguous enough that it’s hard to just say “it wouldn’t work like that.”
Good point, I hadn’t thought of that.
I didn’t have any problem with this at all. The soldier who eventually gets his eyes put out by Jim was never a saint, and I have no problem believing that a combination of a tiny, male-only population who has to constantly deal with crappy food and attacks by blood thirsty zombies (one of whom was one of them and is now chained in in the back) will eventually go a little crazy.
I noticed this on a second viewing of the movie, as well. I was suprised that they didn’t go down some kind of “Jim can’t get infected, so he can save us!” route, and also infinitely glad they didn’t.
I wondered about whether or not it would be possible for a drop of blood to fall like it did, but it doesn’t really matter for the scene’s purpose. One of the recurring themes of the movie that I noticed (to be pretentious about it) was the benefits and perils of human decency. The bird is simply doing what birds do, but Frank doesn’t want to see a corpse disturbed right in front of him, and he dies for it. Jim could have stayed safe in the mansion, but he didn’t want to see his friends turned into sex slaves.
Spoiler request:
Do any animals die? (I can deal with people getting croaked off but not animals. I just get too upset. I can’t see animals die or dead in movies, it just ruins it for me. Same with children. No animals and no children. Nope.)
Baseball bats are pretty easy to come by in sports shops, especially in London. They have a reputation for being used for defence rather than for sport and often they are bought for this reason alone.
Hmmm…you may want to keep your eyes covered for a few scenes then, there Opal. Because you asked for the spoilers, here you go (I’m taking it boxes have been abandoned).
In the beginning, there’s a scene where some animal rights activists are breaking in to save some chimpansees. You see one disected on the table, and when the one they set free attacks one of their own, they kill it (off camera, but I did find that scene rather ironic, seeing as how they went in to save it, and killed it themselves).
Later on, there’s a scene where Jim wanders into a truck station restaraunt/home and is attacked by the only survivor; an infected 10 year old boy. Again, off camera, but a rather powerful scene nonetheless.
As for issues with the speed the virus spread, as the opening suggests, animals can be infected as well. There’s also the scene with the horses where the little girl asks her father “Do you think they’re infected?” I was supprised that the rats they came across weren’t infected as well, but I guess it works. It may only effect mamals, or simply primates, but if it spreads to dogs, cats, and possibly birds (like the raven), then it could spread to other towns VERY fast. Also, the initial trailers give a break down of what happens when. “Day 1. Infection. Day 3. Contamination. Day 7. Evacuation…” stuff like that. The speed threw which the disease spread wasn’t a problem for me.
As for the behavior of the soldiers, again, for me, that didn’t seem too far fetched. I mean, as far as they know, there are very few survivors out there. Aside from their commander, there’s no one to tell them what to do and how to act. I’m sure given enough time, that one cocky sonvabitch would have either killed the commander to assume control, or been killed by the commander to ensure that wouldn’t happen. Any group like that in a situation like that will resort to cold callous behavior quickly. And, if the only women in existance show up, it becomes a contest for “breeding rights,” and things would just get even worse from there. I saw the initial intent on “Giving them women” was more as a “Sanctioned prostitution” type scenario than violent sex slaves. Of course, given time, who knows how it would have turned out.
And I didn’t think the father’s behavior with the bird was anything out of the ordinary. As has been pointed out, in high stress situations, people tend to get irrational and lash out. And humans often have this thing about watching the bodies of the dead being desecrated (and that includes eaten). Seeing the body of what could have simply been another survivor who came upon an unfortunate death, seeing him being torn apart like that in a time like that is rather unsettling. If it had been a dog eating the body, I’m sure he wouldn’t have acted any different. As for the coagulation of the blood, we know that the virus lives in the blood, so perhaps even after it’s left the body, the virus keeps it from solidifying for an extended period of time. There wasn’t much explaination to how the virus works, so it’s completely possible.
DanielWithrow and I saw the movie last night. Damn! That’s how I like my zombies! I thought the third act was great, in some ways a lot scarier than the first two. The most chilling moments for me were “I promised them women” and the scene where Selena gives Hannah the valium. Those scenarios seemed much more real and therefore much scarier than the infected.
I also really liked all the little touches–the fish crowded in the last few inches of water of the bottom of the aquarium, Frank’s attempts to gather water. It showed that someone had really put a lot of though into the movie.
I was in a coma for three days after wrecking an ATV, but I remember the details of the wreck right up to the point just before I bumped my noggin.