Movies
Believe it or not, in ’28 Years Later' the infection is still contained in the UK
The plot of ’28 Years Later' conflicts with the ending of ’28 Weeks Later' - is the second movie still canon?
There are still a few months to go before ’28 Years Later' hits theaters, but some important details about this long-awaited movie are already beginning to emerge, such as the fact that Cillian Murphy will not be appearing as Jim. One of the most interesting facts revealed has to do with the plot. Although the end of ‘28 Weeks Later,’ the second film in the saga, revealed that the infected had reached continental Europe - specifically Paris - in the new installment of the franchise, the infection seems to be contained in the United Kingdom again, which in turn raises new questions.
The plot of 28 Years Later raises more questions than it answers: if the infected are only in the United Kingdom, what is happening in the rest of the world?
Released in 2007, ’28 Weeks Later' was the second installment of this popular horror franchise in which the infected wreak havoc in their wake. While this movie showed efforts to rebuild society in the UK with the help of NATO and the US military several weeks after the initial outbreak of the “Rage Virus”, a new breach in the containment of the infected once again plagues the country. The final sequence of the movie shows the infected arriving in Paris, suggesting that this time the infection has spread to continental Europe via the Eurotunnel.
However, new information about the plot of ’28 Years Later' published in Empire Online seems to contradict the ending of the previous movie. The article talks about the background of this third installment of the saga and mentions that “Britain’s straggling survivors (the rest of the globe remains relatively unaffected, leaving the UK to fend for itself) have learned to live in a full-on post-apocalyptic world.” For fans, this apparent incongruity has set off alarm bells, and there are already several theories about it.
The first is that ’28 Weeks Later' would not be canon. This reasoning would take into account that the second installment of the franchise did not involve Danny Boyle or Alex Garland, the architects of the first film, but was directed by the Spanish Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and written by Rowan Joffé, Fresnadillo himself, E. L. Lavigne and Jesús Olmo. Another theory is that this “relatively unaffected” is very ambiguous and could mean that yes, what was seen at the end of ’28 Weeks Later' is happening in the same timeline of “28 Years Later”, but the outbreak in continental Europe would have been contained, so the infected would effectively be confined to the UK. But the big time jump between the movies also creates additional problems, because at the end of the first part we see how the infected can become severely weakened and even die of starvation - after all, they are still “living people” and not zombies in the classic sense - so the fact that there are still infected almost three decades later will require a very elaborate justification.
The plot of ‘28 Years Later,’ to be released on June 20, 2025, is as follows: It’s been almost three decades since the Rage Virus escaped a medical research laboratory, and in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, they discover secrets, wonders, and horrors of the outside world. The new film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, is directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland.
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