Among the greats in the pandemic movie pantheon is a film from the not so distant past: Danny Boyle’s 2002 post-apocalyptic classic, 28 Days Later. In the present context, one can easily imagine the feeling of waking up from a coma and discovering the streets of London being completely void, silent in the wake of society’s total dismantling and destruction. This is precisely what happens to Jim (Cillian Murphy, in his breakout role), a bike courier who is hit by a car while on the job, which is what lands him, comatose, in the hospital as the events that lead to a virus outbreak conspire. The catalyst being a group of animal rights activists breaking into a test lab in Cambridge and freeing a gaggle of infected with rage (or, more specifically, a virus that causes rage as one of its primary symptoms) chimpanzees–despite the vehement warnings of the scientist who catches them in the act. But as usual, the scientist is not listened to and the animal rights zealots think they’re doing society a grand favor (à la 12 Monkeys), instead doing the exact opposite.
The instant this scene ends, we’re given that immortal title card: 28 Days Later. At which time an overhead shot of a very full frontal Jim waking up in his hospital bed to signs of total desertion paired with the wreckage of chaotic evacuation leads him out onto the empty streets, crossing the Westminster Bridge where the London Eye looms behind, stationary, as all things have come to a standstill in London and beyond. Traversing the land in an incredulous daze, still wearing his hospital attire and his head half-shaved from when they stitched him, Jim looks almost as tore up from the floor up as the city itself. Yet in the current tableau of virus-spurred chaos, one can much more “comfortably” envision being in Jim’s position as he gropes at some course of action that can’t and won’t make itself apparent. Yet at no point does one get the sense that Jim has the thought that perhaps he ought to end it all, what with no one else around to give a shit. Indeed, the entire landscape has been rendered as a reflection of the inside of one’s own head–no one else to turn to but, well, the self.
Meandering into a church with the graffitied warning, “Repent. The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh,” Jim stumbles upon a nest of “zombie” bodies, with the priest himself stirred as he lumbers toward Jim to bite him. Jim, still clearly a good Catholic boy at heart, immediately feels remorse when he hits the priest, not yet registering that there is nothing human left inside. Chased out of this “holy” place, Jim is plucked and saved by two survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley), who bring him up to date on how the post-apocalypse came to be. Sounding eerily familiar to the state of matters now, Selena explains, “It was the blood. There was something in the blood. By the time they tried to evacuate the cities, it was already too late.” Alas, ain’t nobody evacuating any cities in real life when they’re all in lockdown (save for New York, which is still just pretending to be). As Jim grapples with this new non-reality posing as reality, he insists upon going to his parents’ house in Deptford, farther southeast from the center of the city. Selena and Mark agree to accompany him, for what’s left of precious few real humans ought not go unattended.
Discovering that his parents have committed suicide (ostensibly the only rational people in this entire narrative), he sees a note on the back of a childhood photo of himself his mom was holding that reads: “Don’t wake up,” referencing his coma, of course. And oh what a mistake Jim made in defying that wish, returned from his dreamland to a purgatory far worse and more unpredictable.
Soon after, while still in the house, Selena and Jim lose Mark to an attack from the neighbors. For Selena kills him before he turns infected (which takes only a twenty-second window of time). When Jim laments that Mark was “full of plans,” Selena sarcastically returns, “Have you got any plans, Jim? Do you want us to find a cure and save the world or just fall in love and fuck? Plans are pointless. Staying alive’s as good as it gets.” This last missive is rather ironic, indeed, considering life is hardly worth living for any human being when “crude survival” is quote unquote as good as it gets. Yet this cuts to the core of what 28 Days Later says about humankind. That in times of catastrophe and chaos, their most primordial programming kicks in to instruct them to “survive, survive, survive” at any cost and in the face of the bleakest circumstances. Even when all of those circumstances should suggest an entirely contrary reaction: just fucking kill yourself and spare the unending misery.
By the same token, when one is “fighting for their fucking life,” to use a phrase from a certain sexual predator, there’s little time to think about how to check out “ahead of schedule.” That’s what separates the nature of coronavirus from a film-rendered virus. It won’t just fucking upend society full-stop; instead, it wants to unravel it slowly, giving us all more time to think not about survival, but what show or movie we should watch next while wait for the apocalypse to “end.” In this sense, it’s almost worse. To be stuck in the ether between “maybe we can salvage this” and total collapse.
Of course, some countries will have better luck than others at rebuilding, and it bears noting that in 28 Days Later, the UKers are made to believe that everywhere else in the world has been infected when, in truth, it’s just England (which, yes, makes total and complete sense). One can, indeed, foresee that when the borders remain closed between countries even after corona has been “curbed” and information is parsed out as the government wishes, they might try to say the same thing: that it’s everywhere else that’s infected and to stay away. Talk about effortless border control.
At one point early on, Jim asks, “What’s the government doing?” Selena balks, “There’s no government.” Jim, disbelieving, returns, “Of course there’s a government! There’s always a government. They’re in a bunker or a plane…” Selena assures, “No, there’s no government.” At this moment, it certainly feels that way as well, but rest assured “governance” will be in full effect if and when corona is contained. Making certain that you and any other of your kind don’t fly off elsewhere to spread or contract your potential disease. This, too, would constitute a context in which it’s like: why don’t people just fucking do the sane, rational thing and kill themselves? Well, because, darling, it’s in the stars… it’s in the stars that we must live until an outside force kills us.
Incidentally, Selena and Jim, in trying to survive by allying themselves with other “non-infected” humans (as if they aren’t all infected), end up chewing their own leg off. Because not only is hell other people, but said fellow humans turn out to be army men. Possibly the worst variety to attempt a kinship with. At the bare minimum, one of the soldiers, Farrell (Stuart McQuarrie), exhibits a greater sense of appreciation for both the irony of the situation and Mother Nature herself as he remarks at the slapdash dinner table, “If you look at the whole life of the planet, Man has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality. This is what I’ve seen in the four weeks since Infection. People killing people. Which is what I saw in the four weeks before Infection, the four weeks before that… As far back as I care to remember, people killing people. Which to my mind puts us in a state of normality now.”
So yes, in that sense, maybe the reason people don’t just opt for the get out of jail free card in times of extreme apocalyptic turmoil is because chaos is always the constant where humanity is concerned. Besides, one figures they’re not doing much else, they might as well carry on “living.” Just as Jim and his small crew show us time and time again throughout the harrowing debacles that bombard them within the already harrowing larger debacle of post-apocalypse.
