28 Days Later/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The very concept of infection. Can occur in as little as 10-20 seconds and requires only a small droplet of infected blood.
    • This on top of spending 10-20 seconds being brutally beaten to death by an infected person before you join them.
    • Or having a motorcycle helmet or something on, keeping you from being infected until your skin has been torn apart by the force of their blows.
    • Guess what? You just swallowed a drop of infected blood! Now you have ten seconds to live before you become a mindless zombie, unless one of your friends hacks you into pieces with a machete. While you are still alive.
  • The whole sequence where Jim wakes up and finds London deserted and destroyed is a potent dose of Nightmare Fuel in and of itself. Waking out of a coma to something like that, with absolutely no idea what's going on...brrr.
    • The London sections are made so much worse if you live in and around the city. Seeing streets and buildings you know just abandoned or full of pseudo-zombies is really un-nerving.
  • The bit when Jim goes into the church and finds the pile of what look like dead bodies, but when he says "hello", some of them sit up and stare with those vacant red eyes.
  • Mailer. Mailer. Particularly in the shot where one of the soldiers looks out the window and finds Mailer staring right back in at him.
  • Those soldiers. There's one scene where Hannah and Selina are sitting on a small couch, terrified, being slowly circled by a bunch of rapist soldiers who are probably mentally drawing straws to see who goes first...and they dressed the girls in ball dresses. It's bad enough that they're tricking desperate women into being their sex slaves, but they're also trying to pretty them up first. Why would they add that extra disturbing dimension to what already is a disgusting horror?
    • Sadly related, the scene where Selina is desperately feeding Hannah as much Valium as she can 'so she won't care'.
    • The reasoning only adds to the horror: they're trying to desperately imagine some sense of civility to it. Remember the original reason that West promised them women: not for sexual release, but for children. For some sense of a future.
  • Don't mess with Jim. He'll gouge your eyes out. WITH HIS THUMBS.
  • "In the House - In a Heartbeat". The alternating piano notes, the guitar chords, over and over again...an Ear Worm made of Nightmare Fuel.
  • When Frank is infected and urges Hannah to stay away.
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