Lights, Camera, Action: 28 Days Later

How Danny Boyle managed to capture every English persons dream. London with nobody around.

For anyone who has been to London, you will know how impossible it is to have some space for yourself. Every nook and cranny is filled with at least five people, who seem like they are actively trying to get in your way and are annoyed at you when they are.

With all due respect to Londoner's, it is a nightmare. Just the absolute worst in every conceivable way.

28 Days Later surprises you in many ways. The worryingly quick zombies are one. The chilling “I promised them women line” is another. But out of everything in Danny Boyle’s zombie horror flick, it was Cillian Murphy’s Jim walking down the empty streets of London which stuck with me the most.

Both me and Jim share the same confusion. For different reasons, mind you. His world has been flipped upside down. I'mjust amazed they have managed to capture London without another single soul in it.

It's a fantastic tone setter. The feeling of loneliness and isolation is rammed home by seeing a city usually so full of life at a complete standstill. A feeling which is rammed home as Jim's pleading 'Hello' echoes around the streets into an empty void.

It's a masterpiece of a scene. One that sticks out in the mind thanks to Boyle's signature authenticity that he brings to his films.

To my amazement, there was not a single use of CGI for these scenes. In this era, you would be able to get away with putting up a green screen and calling it a day as Cillian Murphy walks around a warehouse.

In fairness, I never thought that Boyle would ever do that. Of course, the other alternative would be to close down the streets to get the shot, but on a tight £5 million budget, they couldn't afford that luxury.

They instead opted for a much cheaper alternative. Waking up earlier. Easy right? The crew would have to get up in the early hours of the morning and get the shots before the city came alive. 

Of course, there would be a few straddlers. But a simple “can you wait a minute to walk through” was enough to achieve the emptiness of the scene.

The crew used small cameras that were easily moved so they could get the shots before the city woke up. Noise wasn’t much of an obstacle. If you ever walked around a city in the early hours, the sound it makes while still in slumber is eerie enough to fit into a horror flick.

When it’s boiled down, it sounds so simple. And it is. In an era where cutting corners is becoming the norm, a little bit of effort and early nights seems a little too far-fetched.

If only they were filming through COVID, getting this shot would have been a breeze.

But its impact isn’t for the impressive and outlandish way they got it done, but the way it perfectly encapsulates the mood of the whole film.

Seeing Jim walk around London's biggest landmarks without a soul in sight tells us the impact these ravenous, bloodthirsty zombies have had on our society. The crew's efforts were not wasted.  Nothing portrays the post-apocalyptic feeling more than one of the busiest cities being a barren wasteland. 

It is the perfect start to what ended up being one of the best zombie films we have ever seen.

All things considered, if you offered me the chance to walk around London for a day with no one in sight, with the caveat being I had to fight off a few zombies, I'd snap your hand off. Or, depending on how I fare, I'll be coming to bite your hand off.