28 DAY LATER / 28 WEEKS LATER

28 Days Later [2002]

"His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't."

Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Stars: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris and Christopher Eccleston

Storyline

 

Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. The naive activists ignore the pleas of a scientist to keep the cages locked, with disastrous results. Twenty-eight days later, our protagonist, Jim, wakes up from a coma, alone, in an abandoned hospital. He begins to seek out anyone else to find London is deserted, apparently without a living soul. After finding a church, which had become inhabited by zombie like humans intent on his demise, he runs for his life. Selena and Mark rescue him from the horde and bring him up to date on the mass carnage and horror as all of London tore itself apart. This is a tale of survival and ultimately, heroics, with nice subtext about mankind's savage nature.

28 Weeks Later [2007]

"When days turn to weeks, the horror returns."

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Writers: Rowan Joffe & Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne and Robert Carlyle

Storyline

 

In the country nearby London, Don, his wife Alice and a few survivors live hidden in a farmhouse. When infected people break in the house, Don panics and does not help his wife to escape, running away and leaving Alice trapped inside the room. Twenty eight weeks after the outbreak that annihilated the population of Great Britain, London is considered safe and the British survivors return under the coordination of the American Army, that keeps the city under permanent surveillance. The teenager Tammy and her younger brother Andy travel back from Spain to live with their father Don in London. They miss their mother and decide to escape to their old house to retrieve pictures and some other personal belongings. However, they find Alice surprisingly alive and the Army brings her to the base. After some blood test, the biologist Scarlet discovers that Alice is a carrier of the lethal virus and somehow has immunity to it...