Press "Enter" to skip to content

Now Is a Great Time to Point out That 28 Days Later Is an Outbreak Film Not a Zombie Film

Hey everyone! We all have the coronavirus pandemic on our minds. Everyone is rightfully pretty scared. Basic survival supplies and hand sanitizer are sold out all over town. As we watch the death toll increase daily we can only fear the possibilities that face our vulnerable loved ones if this gets out of control. So we think this is as good of a time as any to distract ourselves with a lighthearted dissection of Danny Boyle’s highly revered 2002 horror classic “28 Days Later” with the hypothesis that it is actually an outbreak film and not the zombie film you may have thought it was. Let’s do it!

Oh we know. You’re going to disagree. How could this breakthrough role for highly skilled acting craftsman Cillian Murphy be anything but a zombie film? Well let us ask you this: Are the “zombies” in the movie walking dead people? No, they are not dead. They are infected. Just like the folks who now have the Coronavirus. Sorry, but Zombies are dead people. This is an Outbreak movie.

That makes us wonder, when the Coronavirus takes control, will we end up living in the hellscape the movie is set in? It’s hard to say. We’ll just point out there are rumors the coronavirus was created in a lab. Hmm interesting, isn’t it? If you remember the movie, the “rage” virus was also created in a lab. So it would be hard to argue that similar paths don’t lay ahead. Just saying.

Anyway, we think the biggest lesson we can take away from “28 Days Later” is how they eventually beat the “infected.” In case you forgot, the “infected” eventually starved to death. See? Zombies don’t fucking starve to death. They wander the earth searching for brains until someone removes the head from the body. That’s like zombie 101. This is important to remember because the starving thing will be key when dealing with our own relatives when they become infected.

Now wasn’t that a nice distraction? We feel a lot better having properly classified this film once and for all. Hope you all do too!