This weekend we’re getting a belated sequel to 28 Days Later, the 2002 horror hit that, in retrospect, looks like it was shot with the same camcorder used to document your uncle’s wedding.
It’s no surprise that 28 Years Later exists, considering that so many people love the original film. But two decades ago, Danny Boyle’s acclaimed horror-thriller, pseudo-zombie movie took some shit from the young British whippersnappers who made Shaun of the Dead.
In fact, the ending of Shaun of the Dead specifically mocks 28 Days Later. As you may recall, the humanoid creatures of Boyle’s film were the victims of a contagion known as the “Rage Virus” — presumably because the “Tweaked Out Zombie Sprinter Virus” would have been a little too on the nose. In the final moments of Edgar Wright’s zombie comedy, a TV news anchor states that all reports that “Z-day” was caused by “rage-infected monkeys have now been dismissed as bull–”
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“That was our little jibe at 28 Days Later,” Wright later admitted, revealing that it was actually his voice delivering the line.
The bitterness toward 28 Days Later seemed to be less about the movie itself, and more the way the filmmakers talked about it in the press. “My beef with 28 Days Later,” Wright told Film Freak Central at the time, “is that Danny Boyle really tried to take the air out of the genre. He said he didn’t like them like he didn’t respect them or something and insisted on calling his film a ‘thriller’ or something like that. I didn’t like that.”
It’s true that the filmmakers did downplay the zombie-like elements of 28 Years Later, since the apocalyptic monsters were arguably just Rage-infected humans with the ability to run like the wind. “We were very worried about people thinking it was a zombie movie,” Boyle said in 2003. “Because I think if you’re a zombie fan, you’ll be disappointed. I thought of it as a science-fiction film that happens next Wednesday.”
More recently, the film’s screenwriter, Alex Garland attempted to clear up this controversy once and for all. “I’m aware for years and years there’s been debates about that — over whether or not it’s a zombie movie,” he told Empire Magazine. “It’s a zombie movie. Whatever the technical discrepancies may or may not exist, they’re pretty much zombies.”
The folks behind Shaun of the Dead had another reason to be annoyed at 28 Days Later. As Simon Pegg has noted, when he and Wright began writing their film, they thought they were “resurrecting a dead genre” and would be “ahead of the curve.” But then they found out about Boyle’s project while they were in the middle of writing the Shaun script. “I vividly remember Simon calling me and saying, ‘Hey, you know Danny Boyle’s doing a zombie film,’” Wright told Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘Oh, we’re fucked!’”
“I was so mad. I was so absolutely livid, because I was like, ‘No, we’re doing a zombie film,’” Wright explained to the Indie Film Hustle podcast. Although, in hindsight, he now believes that the popularity of 28 Days Later may have actually been a “blessing.” And as he once proudly pointed out, Shaun “ended up outgrossing 28 Days Later in the U.K.”
Just don’t hold your breath for a sequel.
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