She has been bitten, infected (it turns out) but not succumbed to rage. They escape the safe zone to go to their old home and in the house they find Alice. Andy has Heterochromia – his eyes are different colours, a trait inherited from his mum. The Isle of Dogs has become district one, a place where survivors are being taken and Don’s kids, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) are repatriated from a refugee camp (they were on the continent with a school camp when the outbreak occurred). Cut forward and The US army are helping the rebuilding of Britain. Don escapes through an upstairs window, leaving Alice behind to her fate. They and other survivors have found shelter in a farmhouse, but it comes under attack from the infected. So, moving forward to the sequel, we meet Don (Robert Carlyle, Ravenous) and Alice (Catherine McCormack), during the infection. You will notice I am looking at both films, however, as the second film added a new dimension into the equation. Nowhere in the film did I spot anything to suggest they fed off blood and the infection was not an exchange of fluids but the passing of infected fluids to a non-infected person. In fact this is the payoff for the film – that they will die of starvation eventually. That conceit might pass to the infected who do not seem overly interested in feeding or watering themselves. However the film relies on this (and the conceit has become a zombie trope – though films such as the Walking Deceased have lampooned the concept). The next conceit is that a man, Jim (Cillian Murphy), can be in a coma for 28 days and not die (likely he would not have starved, as lack of fluids would have killed him way before). This is definitely a virus but, beyond that it is a distillation of human rage and violence in viral form – the chimpanzees in which the virus was developed are forced to watch scenes of violence and it seems to be from this that the virus is developed. The first conceit is the speed of infection, literally taking seconds to change from rational human to slavering beast. So before we begin let us take account of some of the conceits within the films (which I enjoy by the way). There are two aspects here that gave me pause to thought – the idea that the infected feed off blood and the vampiric exchange of bodily fluids. While they do not necessarily eat the flesh like most zombies, they do engage in an almost vampiric exchange of bodily fluids that serves to spread the virus.” (pg 85) Whilst she does refer to the infected as zombies there was the following passage: “ They attack and bite into the bodies of uninfected, ripping through skin, sinew and muscle, and seemingly feed off their blood.
So why look at it here? Honestly, because of Stacey Abbott’s Undead Apocalypse.
It perhaps had more in common with Romero’s the Crazies than zombies but was adopted into zombie fandom. So we have a virus that quickly infects (through bodily fluids – mostly blood fluids) and the resultant infected are just that infected, violent, destructive and filled with rage. The franchise continued with 28 Weeks Later, in 2007, this time helmed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. The 2002 Danny Boyle directed 28 Days Later was something of a watershed film that helped usher in the new wave of (especially fast) zombies – despite the film not having zombies in it. Why, oh why are you doing a ‘Vamp or Not?’ on 28 Days later? I wouldn’t blame you for asking that question straight off the bat.
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