The Infected of 28 Days Later

(Am I stupid, or can you not effectively copy/paste a word document to this text box? It wouldn't let me paste it here. Anywho.)

In my mind, and with others who I know, I’ve counted 28 Days Later as one of the best zombie films of recent years. But it’s only now that I realize that it shouldn’t be called a zombie film. In class we discussed what is and isn’t a zombie, although mostly in the context of between vampires and them.

The “creatures” in the film are referred to as “infected”. They have been infected with “Rage” which turns them into super-aggressive, contagious, bodies of filth. Now, we know of zombies that come to be from viral means, but the big difference between viral zombies and Rage victims are the fact that the infected in the film do not die before flipping the crazy switch. In the two main cases where this is evident are at the beginning where the activist gets bitten, and when Frank gets the blood in his eye. This shows the near instantaneous rate of infection of the virus. Correct me if I’m wrong, but not once in the film does it show an already dead body coming back infected.

On that note, I believe that the infected are strictly still human. Granted, their reasoning functions along with their emotions are shot to hell, but their bodies do not rot like zombies. They are simply human beings who have been infected with a virus. In fact, at the end of the film you see some infected starved to death, and I don’t know about you, but I never heard of zombies starving.

Since we mentioned that even zombies used to be someone, like your neighbor or sibling or what have you, they are no longer that person once zombified. But with Rage, the person you have to kill could have, not one minute ago, just been your friend. The example I keep coming back to is when Frank turns about two thirds into the film. Frank gets a drop of infected blood in his eye, and he knows exactly what will happen any second, trying to keep his daughter away from him (no matter how often I see this movie, I still choke up a little at that scene). And Jim is clearly hesitant to bash in the head of the happy man who was his friend just seconds ago, as I’m more than sure would be the case for anyone forced into the same position.

Despite his apparent indifference to the situation, I believe that Major Henry West hit the nail on the head when he said “This is what I've seen in the four weeks since infection: people killing people. Which is much what I saw in the four weeks before infection, and the four weeks before that, and before that, as far back as I care to remember- people killing people”. With all I’ve seen and discussed, how can you bring yourself to kill someone? Not even just a zombie, but another person. Rage makes an already hard decision much more difficult.