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Theatrical poster.

28 Weeks Later is a 2007 British post-apocalyptic horror film, and the sequel to the 2002 film 28 Days Later. The film was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and was released in the United Kingdom and in the United States on May 11th, 2007.

Synopsis

Don Harris and his heterochromic wife Alice are holed up in a remote countryside cottage in England during the original outbreak of the Rage virus in Britain, and are preparing dinner for four other survivors there with them: the elderly Geoff and Sally, the cold and steely Jacob and the helpless Karen whose boyfriend abandoned the group. Don and Alice have two young children, who were saved from the outbreak in Britain by a school trip abroad. As the group all sit down and eat, they suddenly hear a young boy outside banging on the door and begging to be let in. Don reluctantly lets the boy into the cottage, and, while having food, the boy says that he is from the nearby town Sandford and has been fleeing from his infected parents and a horde of many other infected. While explaining this, the cottage suddenly comes under attack by the infected, who have followed the boy. On their first attack, Karen is infected and then killed by Don. While Don briefly holds off the infected getting in, the group flee and get separated into two: Alice and the boy flee upstairs, while Geoff, Sally and Jacob try to escape through the cottage barn. The infected break through even as Geoff stays behind to hold them off, and he and Sally are both overrun while Jacob escapes through the barn window. At the same time, Alice follows the terrified boy upstairs to try and save him, while Don follows to try and save her. Don tries to convince Alice to flee but she refuses to leave without the boy, and when the infected corner her and the boy in a bedroom, Don abandons his wife and the boy and flees the cottage by himself. With dozens of infected in hot pursuit, Don flees across the farmland to the river dock, where Jacob is attempting to escape by a motorboat. While Don gets into the motorboat and starts it up, Jacob falls into the river and is infected by the infected who have waded into the waters after the survivors, then killed by Don with the motorboat's propeller-blades. Don then escapes downriver from the infected, emerging as the sole survivor.

After the Rage outbreak destroys and wipes out Britain, over the following twenty-eight weeks, the infected die from starvation, and a US-led NATO force enters London and begins repatriating the city with Britons who escaped during the exodus of infected Britain in the outbreak. Among the military force that guard and protect London and its repatriated residents are wisecracking sniper Doyle, and his good friend helicopter pilot Flynn, as well as chief medical officer Scarlet Levy and operation leader General Stone, and Don Harris (who is caretaker of the fully-functional and fortified repatriation zone District One in London).

Among the latest repatriated arrivals to London are Don and Alice's children Tammy and Andy, and the admittance of children into District One without Scarlet's authorisation shocks and worries her. During the two kids' medical inspection, Scarlet notes that Andy has the same heterochromic green and brown eye colour his mother Alice did. Andy and Tammy are reunited with their father Don, who takes them to his luxurious District One penthouse. When the kids ask about what happened to their mother, Don tells them about the infected attack on the cottage during the pandemic, but lies that he saw the infected kill Alice.

The following night, Andy has a nightmare of Alice tearing her face off as Andy fears he'll forget his mother's face; so the next morning, Tammy decies to sneak out of District One with Andy to get a picture of Alice from their old home, though Doyle notices the two sneak out and alerts Flynn. In the ruined, unoccupied area of London, after taking a motorbike from an abandoned pizzeria, Tammy uses it to drive herself and Andy across an empty London to their old home, where the siblings grab a picture of Andy and Alice together and stay to collect their other lost old belongings at the house. While exploring the old Harris home alone, a shocked Andy finds Alice living in one of the rooms, physically and mentally dishevelled from her isolation but otherwise alive. The reunion is cut short when the US military, having been sent to bring Tammy and Andy back to District One, arrive and take them and Alice back to the green zone, where Alice is separated from the kids and the three are detained.

During medical inspection of Alice, Scarlet is about to do a blood test and is trying to ask Alice how she stayed alive out in the post-outbreak country, when she notices an old bite scar on Alice's arm and fears Alice may be infected. Meanwhile, Don goes to a detained Tammy and Andy to take them home, but the kids are furious with their father for lying to them about their mother's fate and demand to know the truth about what really happened. Guilty over abandoning his wife, Don leaves and slips past the military security to go to Alice in the isolation room. As Don sneaks in to see Alice, Scarlet's tests on Alice's blood confirm that she is infected with the Rage virus, but is not suffering any of the virus' symptoms due to a natural immunity caused by a genetic abnormality - making Alice an asymptomatic carrier who is herself immune to the virus' symptoms, but still carries the virus and can pass it on to others. Scarlet wants to keep Alice alive for more tests in hopes of finding a key to immunisation against the Rage virus from Alice's blood, but Stone wants to have Alice killed to ensure she can't cause another outbreak of infection.

In the isolation room, Don begs Alice to forgive him for abandoning her, which she seemingly does. However, Don and Alice then kiss, causing the Rage in Alice's saliva to infect Don. The infected Don brutally beats Alice to death, before escaping into District One, attacking and infecting or killing anyone he comes across. Upon learning infection is spreading, Stone and the other generals move to a safety bunker and execute a District One lockdown called Code Red. As the Rage virus spreads and chaos takes hold, when the spread reaches the detainment area where Tammy and Andy are, Scarlet comes and rescues the kids and tries to get them evacuated to safety as top-priority figures. However, in the chaos, Andy gets separated from Scarlet and Tammy and is herded with District One's other civilians into a safe room garage where the soldiers lock them all inside as the green zone's power cuts out.

As District One's military forces mobilise against the outbreak, in the garage where Andy and the civilians are locked in, the infected Don breaks into the garage as a horrified Andy watches and attacks the civilians, causing the infection to massively and virulently spread among the civilians there in a domino effect and quickly infecting dozens - hundreds. In the panic, the civilians break out of the garage and flee into the streets, while Andy escapes from the infected through the ventilation systems. In the streets of District One, Doyle and the other rooftop snipers are initially ordered to shoot only infected, but as the infection continues to spread and it becomes harder to tell the infected from uninfected, they're ordered to kill everyone in sight. Andy escapes from the chaos and infected into a warehouse where other survivors are holed up as the military massacre everyone, while Doyle - unable to comply with kill-all order - abandons his post and joins the survivors in the warehouse. There, Andy reunites with Scarlet and Tammy and sadly informs his sister of how their father is one of the infected, and Doyle offers the kids, Scarlet and three other survivors there to escape the chaotic green zone with him before the military inevitably exterminates them with the infected.

Doyle subsequently leads the group through the empty streets towards the District One perimeter, trying to fight off snipers shooting at them along the way although two of the three other survivors are killed along the way. Just as the Air Cavalry arrive to firebomb District One, Doyle, Andy, Scarlet, Tammy and Sam (the remaining other survivor) escape over the District One perimeter just as the green zone is firebombed and destroyed and thousands there killed. The generals watch District One burn from in their bunker, but Stone also sees that a large number of infected have survived the firebombing and are escaping into London. As dawn arrives, Doyle and the other four survivors travel across an empty and dilapidated London to Regent's Park to be airlifted to safety by Flynn when he comes to Doyle. As Scarlet and Doyle discuss how they ended up turning against the military and how Scarlet saved Tammy and Andy because she believes they may have inherited their mother's immunity to the symptoms of the Rage virus, Tammy and Andy think about all that has happened, and Tammy admis she doesn't believe Alice has survived this time.

Flynn warns Doyle over the radio of the surviving infected loose in London, and a large horde of the infected then arrive at Regent's Park as Flynn flies to the Park for Doyle by helicopter. When Flynn sees Doyle has rescued civilians, he refuses to take them with them to safety, especially when Doyle wants Flynn to take them across the English Channel to safety in Europe. As the infected attack, Flynn is forced to leave when Sam grabs onto his helicopter in a panic, though not before Flynn mows a majority of the attacking infected to shreds using his helicopter's rotor blades. Doyle, Scarlet, Andy and Tammy flee back into London from the remaining infected, and Flynn instructs Don over the radio to abandon the others and meet Flynn at Wembley Stadium for pickup. When the military begin pumping nerve gas into London, Doyle, Scarlet and the Harris siblings take refuge from the gas in a van as the gas kills off the infected pursuing them. After the gas has killed the infected, when Doyle sees soldiers armed with flamethrowers approaching, he goes out to push the car by jump-starting, but is killed in the process when the soldiers see and incinerate him with their flamethrowers.

Scarlet tries to avoid the military as she drives Tammy and Andy through London, until an air attack forces the trio to abandon the van and flee into the London Underground. There, Scarlet tries to guide Tammy and Andy through the dark Underground with Doyle's rifle's night-vision scope. However, while guiding the siblings down an escalator, the three get separated when Andy and Tammy fall down the stairs. Scarlet manages to find Tammy, but the former is just afterwards attacked and beaten to death by an infected. Tammy finds Scarlet’s body. Elsewhere in the Underground, Andy wanders out onto a dark platform, where the infected that killed Scarlet comes across and attacks him. Tammy then arrives, armed with the rifle, as the infected bites Andy to her horror. When Tammy catches the infected's attention, she sees to her horror that it's Don. The infected Don then attacks Tammy, forcing her to shoot and kill her father. She cries, that after everything he’s ever done, Don should’ve help Alice and the kid a few days ago. Just afterwards, a bitten Andy flees from Tammy into a dark tunnel as Tammy follows him. When the Rage virus doesn't take Andy over, Tammy looks at Andy and sees his left eye is turning bloodshot just as Alice's was, showing that Andy has indeed inherited their mother's immunity and become a carrier of the virus.

Andy and Tammy subsequently head out of the Underground together and go to Wembley Stadium, where they find Flynn waiting with his helicopter for Doyle. When Flynn learns that Andy and Tammy are the only survivors and Doyle is dead, he reluctantly decides to airlift the two kids to safety as Doyle had asked of him. Flynn airlifts Andy and Tammy in his helicopter across London and out of infected Britain across the Channel, towards Europe. Twenty-eight days later, Flynn's helicopter is empty and abandoned somewhere in France with someone calling for help over the chopper's radio. A horde of infected are then shown running out of a Metro exit in Paris towards the Eiffel Tower, revealing that the Rage virus has now spread to mainland Europe.

Cast

Actor Role
Robert Carlyle Donald Harris
Jeremy Renner Sergeant Doyle
Rose Byrne Major Scarlet Levy
Idris Elba General Stone
Catherine McCormack Alice Harris
Harold Perrineau Flynn
Imogen Poots Tammy Harris
Mackintosh Muggleton Andy Harris
Shahid Ahmed Jacob
Emily Beecham Karen
Garfield Morgan Geoff
Amanda Walker Sally

Deleted scenes

The DVD release of 28 Weeks Later has two deleted scenes from the film on the special features.

The Canteen

A scene in the canteen of District One, where Andy goes and sits down beside Scarlet. Don and Tammy arrive and they all formally introduce themselves to Scarlet. Scarlet tries to explain that the Rage Virus is possibly still alive, but concedes that it is probably gone. Though the full scene was cut from the film, some shots from it can be seen in the finished film.

Andy's Dream

After Tammy kills Don, and Andy runs away from her, down into the subway, he sits down on a station platform and waits for the Rage Virus to take him over. A train suddenly arrives, and Andy gets aboard. He sees Alice, his mother, in another carriage, and runs towards her. The two meet and embrace, but Andy then realises that it is just a hallucination, and that he is still in the Underground subway with Tammy.

Videos

Sequel

As originally announced in March 2007, Danny Boyle has had thoughts and plans for a third film in the 28 Days Later series, which will be given the title 28 Months Later. Boyle has stated that his thoughts are to set the movie in Russia. In June 2007, it was announced that if DVD sales of 28 Weeks Later did well, Fox Atomic would consider producing the third film.

In July 2007, while promoting Sunshine, Boyle revealed that he has a story formulating for the next film. "There is an idea for the next one, something which would move [the story] on. I've got to think about it, whether it's right or not." Boyle also revealed that he would return as the director. Alex Garland (the screenwriter of the first film), on the other hand, said in October 2010: "When we made 28 Days Later, the rights were frozen between a group of people who are no longer talking to each other. And so, the film is never going to happen unless those people start talking to each other again. There is no script as far as I'm aware."

However, Boyle stated on 13 April, 2013: "It's 40/60 whether [a sequel] happens or not. But we did have an idea of where to set it and what it might be about;" and Alex Garland likewise said in January 2015: "We've just started talking about it seriously. We’ve got an idea. Danny and Andrew and I have been having quite serious conversations about it so it is a possibility. It’s complicated. There's a whole bunch of reasons why it's complicated, which are boring so I won’t go into, but there's a possibility."

In January 2019, Boyle confirmed that he had recently met with Garland to begin pre-production on 28 Months Later.

In January 2024, it was announced that a third film titled 28 Years Later, was officially in development; with plans for the project to be the first of a new trilogy of sequels. Danny Boyle will direct the first installment, with a script written by Alex Garland; while the latter will write the scripts each of the planned movies in the three releases. Boyle, Garland, Andrew Macdonald, and Peter Rice will serve as producers.

Trivia

  • Originally, when Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Andrew Macdonald first considered producing a second film in the series, they considered calling it 29 Days Later. Several ideas for a 29 Days Later film were put forward, before it was decided to use the 28 Weeks Later idea:
    • Jim, Hannah and Selena from the first film would probably return.
    • The story of an SAS team sent into infected London during the time frame of 28 Days Later to rescue the Queen or the Prime Minister.
    • A story which focuses on the impact the initial outbreak of Rage has had on society.
  • 28 Weeks Later was originally going to end with Flynn's helicopter parked in France twenty-eight days after Tammy, Andy and Flynn leave Britain. However, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Enrique López Lavigne conceived the ending in which the Rage Virus spreads to France as a last-minute idea before the film was to be handed over to Fox Searchlight for distribution.
  • Though in the finished film, the scenes in which Doyle, Tammy, Scarlet, Andy and Sam try to escape District One take place at night, in the trailer for the film, they are in broad daylight. This is because the scenes were filmed in daylight, and a new computer technique was used to darken the image and make it appear in the finished film that it was night.
  • Some of the scenes and lines that are used in trailers and promotional images are absent in the film, such as Sam being infected, Doyle winking as he push-starts the car, the infected prowling through the London Underground, Stone saying "This is what its all about gentleman, family’s starting again", Andy saying "Are you going to tell us what happen to mum", the infected attacking a person in the hallway which it was trimmed with Andy walking the window to watch with Tammy, the camera moves into the tunnel, a trimmed scene of the infected Don attacking a person in the garage, an alternate shot of Don went to the garage to save Andy, Sam on the helicopter and Sandford boy being infected.
  • Released the same year as The Reaping, also starring Idris Elba.

Errors

  • When Don is running from the cottage to the dock, fresh tire tracks can be seen in the ground.
  • The DLR train carrying new citizens from the airport has "Greenwich" on the front. Greenwich is across the river from the Isle of Dogs, so it wouldn't have been part of District One.
  • Scarlet is shown to wear her hair in a ponytail while in uniform. In real life, women in the US Army are not allowed to wear their hair beneath the collar.
  • Flynn's helicopter changes multiple times. He falls asleep in an Aerospatiale Gazelle. When he attempts to rescue Doyle, he is flying an Aerospatiale A-Star. When he lands in the stadium to rescue Doyle and the children, he is once again flying an Aerospatiale Gazelle.
  • When Tammy and Andy leave District One to re-visit their old home, they are shown crossing Tower Bridge, which, as they have started their journey from the Isle of Dogs, means they are travelling south across the Thames, but the next shot shows them passing the London Gherkin, which is built on the North Bank.
  • When Tammy and Andy are driving on the motorbike through London, in one shot, a person with a camera is very briefly visible in a blur.
  • When Scarlet kills the infected Weise, blood splatters over the window, covering the area of the detainment room's window where his hands are. But in the shot where Weise's body collapses to the floor, most of the blood on the glass has gone.
  • While trying to escape with the survivors, Scarlet is shot on the inside-front of her left leg, which she bandages up. Later in the abandoned Regent's Park, when she re-bandages her wound, it has moved to the outside-front of the leg.
  • Wembley Stadium and the London Gherkin are both shown fully built in the film. However, 28 Weeks Later apparently takes place between 2002 and 2003; the Gherkin wasn't fully built until 2004, and construction for Wembley Stadium did not even begin until 2003.
  • The uniforms the US Army wear are ACU's (Army Combat Uniforms). The US Army did not start using these until 2007-2008; as 28 Weeks Later is set in 2002 - 2003, they should be wearing BDU's (Battle Dress Uniforms).
  • When Flynn is arguing with Doyle in Regent's Park over taking the other survivors, a stunt pilot is visible in the helicopter next to Flynn.
  • When Doyle, Tammy, Scarlet and Andy are fleeing Regent's Park, Doyle fires his gun three times to kill four Infected. However, at the third shot, two of them fall, but since they weren't lined, it would be impossible to kill both men with only one shot.
  • When the survivors are driving to escape the toxic gas, the windshield is covered in blood, which disappears in the next shot, then reappears.
  • The infected Don beats Scarlet to death with the butt end of Doyle's M4 rifle. However, through the scope, it appears that he is using the other end to beat her to death.
  • After Andy is bitten and infected by Don, he becomes a Carrier of the Rage Virus like his mother, and thus his left eye's sclera partially turns red. However, in the scene where Tammy and Andy confront Flynn at Wembley Stadium, Andy's left eye is clearly visible, and his sclera is all white again.

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