28 Days Later/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • After only a few weeks, the soldiers were so blinded by lust that they were going to rape a child. That's where this movie lost me.
    • Actually, for all they dress Hannah up too, none of the soldiers actually seem interested in her. Not that that makes them any less terrible, but that observation can make the whole thing (slightly) less uncomfortable to watch.
    • They aren't blinded by lust. They've lost hope of survival because they have no future to look forward to. Women represent that hope that things could get better for them, and they aren't going to let things like consent or age get in the way of that hope.
    • That's still an extremely short time for soldiers to be so overcome with despair that they'll resort to rape. It's not uncommon for soldiers to be separated from their wives/loved ones for a year or more in Real Life, and most of them can avoid cheating on their spouse, much less rape. There are obviously exceptions, but it is grounds for trial by court-martial, dishonorable discharge, and imprisonment. For an officer to condone it a mere month after the plague first hits is a bit much.
      • Of course, those situations are a little different from the end of the world.
      • Exactly. The soldiers aren't overseas fighting another country until the wars over and they can come home; they're in the middle of an apocalyptic pandemic, they've probably seen their buddies killed or infected along with their family and any girlfriends or wives they might of had and in their mind the world as they've known it is over. And the officer probably believes the same thing. His family and friends are dead and the only people he's got left are his soldiers. We heard that he had found one of his soldiers with a gun in his mouth because the world was "futureless" so in a desparate attempt to keep his men together and keep morale up, he "promised them women." He was probably already cynical (his people killing people speech at dinner) before the infection, so seeing people he knew or loved turned into diseased beasts probably traumatised him to point of insanity. Plus, except for the Only Sane Man, most of the soldiers were young kids who probably had their whole lives ahead of them before, and are now (in their mind) "futureless". Certain people do crazy things after passing their Despair Event Horizon.
  • Have the soldiers not considered simply vacating to another country? Though there were (spurious) rumours about the plague being in Paris and New York, it seems improbable that they wouldn't at least try to get off the Island, rather than resorting to raping the few survivors.
    • They don't know that they've been quarantined, in their mind the world has ended, they're still alive, and England is their home. Why leave one location thats familiar for an unknown location if you expect the same chaos there too?
  • Where are all the cars in this film? The motorways are completely deserted, when surely they would be chocked full of cars from when people were trying to evacuate the cities.