28 Years Later Can Bring Back 2 Cut Ideas For The Original Movie’s Infected (But Only 1 Would Work)

Now that 28 Years Later is finally happening, the sequel can revive one great lost plan for the monstrous Infected while dropping a less promising previous idea. Director Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later revived the zombie horror genre when the British horror movie was released in 2002. Starring Cillian Murphy as a hospital patient who wakes up from a coma to discover a deserted London city, 28 Days Later was a gritty, brutally bleak horror movie that eschewed the clichés of earlier zombie stories. 28 Days Later’s Infected weren’t undead, but rather diseased people driven to murderous madness by viral rage.

The sequel 28 Weeks Later offered another dark visit to this post-apocalyptic world in 2007, but this follow-up didn’t bring back any of the original movie’s actors. Now, the upcoming 28 Years Later promises to bring the trilogy to a close by showing viewers what has become of the franchise’s grim dystopia. Cillian Murphy will take on an executive producer role, while original screenwriter Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle will reprise their creative roles in the long-awaited follow-up. This could give the collaborators a chance to bring back an ingenious idea that was cut from 28 Days Later.

28 Days Later Was Going To Have More Talking Infected

The classic horror originally featured talking zombies

Technically, the Infected can talk in 28 Days Later. This detail is proven when Jim kills a child in self-defense and the character can be heard saying “I hate you.” However, Boyle’s movie was going to make this a bigger deal, with the Infected constantly screaming words that were hard to decipher, but whose murderous intent was easy to discern. Per Boyle in the movie’s DVD commentary, “We put all this rolling, incessant vocabulary of the infected screaming at people like rage and we put it on them the whole time, and most of the time it’s not really decipherable what it is.”

Boyle went on to concede that the line “I hate you” is probably a bit too clear to fit this approach. 28 Days Later’s rage virus was terrifying because it made the Infected unstoppable, angry, and vicious, but also because it never technically killed them. Whenever the heroes were forced to take the life of an Infected character to save themselves, it was always clear that they were killing a living person. Giving the Infected more discernible dialogue in 28 Years Later could make this even more affecting, while also ironically making the villains scarier and more threatening at the same time.

Talking Infected Would Be Great For 28 Years Later

The 28 Days Later trilogy’s long-awaited ending could revive this inspired idea

28 Years Later can revisit this idea, especially because the Infected have had time to develop. Both The Walking Dead and George A. Romero’s iconic Night of the Living Dead franchise experimented with the idea of zombies gaining increased sentience over time, with some zombies becoming antiheroes in the later Romero movies. Now, 28 Years Later can take the Rage virus of 28 Days Later and make it even worse by bringing talking zombies to the forefront. This isn’t a completely new idea, but it would be uniquely upsetting in this franchise thanks to the pitilessly bleak tone of the movies.

Both 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later lean into the horrors of surviving a zombie apocalypse, as the characters are constantly forced to contend with the morality of their decisions from scene to scene. The infamously brutal opening scene of 28 Weeks Later sees its hero abandon his wife to escape the Infected, and one of the few ways this could have been even nastier is if the movie made viewers privy to everything they were screaming as they pursued him. 28 Years Later’s arrival could make its monsters even scarier with this canny addition.

28 Years Later Can’t Just Reuse The Same Infected As The Past 2 Movies

The zombies of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later must evolve

Dan O’Bannon’s iconic Return of the Living Dead featured zombies that spoke, calling for “Brains” and at one point telling an emergency response unit to “Send more paramedics” after eating the first set. However, this was played for laughs, not pathos or horror. If the Infected of 28 Years Later spoke, viewers can be sure that their dialogue would be much more unsettling. They are already super fast, aggressive, and brutally violent, meaning this sequel must now find a way to make the Infected even scarier. With the ability to speak, they could become scarier than ever in the franchise’s third installment.

Upon release, 28 Days Later revolutionized the zombie genre with its fast “Zombies.” Everything from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake to the relatively light-hearted Zombieland borrowed this twist, making fast zombies the sub-genre’s new norm within a few years. As such, 28 Years Later needs to change its villains again. Giving them dialogue but maintaining their erratic, hyper-violent nature could make the Infected seem less chaotic and more like The Sadness’s sadistic villains. That viral South Korean horror hit became famous precisely because of how shockingly cruel its monsters were, something 28 Years Later could emulate.

28 Years Later Could Bring Back Another Cut Infected Idea (But Really Shouldn’t)

The sequel shouldn’t revive another, more divisive idea

Speaking of The Sadness, there are elements of that extreme horror that 28 Years Later shouldn’t replicate. The 28 Days Later commentary mentions one unused idea for the movie wherein the Infected’s violence was more sexually charged. This would have made sense since the virus was driven by rage, but it also sounded like a terrible idea for a horror movie. Per Boyle: “One of the ideas somebody had for the Infected (was) that they should be raging sex machines.” This is one premise that would be better left on the cutting room floor as the franchise’s creators reunite for the new movie.

It would be almost impossible to handle this material tactfully within the context of a dark, gruesome horror movie. Sexual assault is a difficult subject for any movie to tackle, but throwing it in as an extra addendum to the Infected’s arsenal of threats trivializes real-life trauma. In contrast, making this subject the main focus of the movie would change the tone of the franchise entirely in a way that wouldn’t necessarily work. As such, 28 Years Later should steer clear of this twist as it would take a deft hand to make it succeed and the sequel doesn’t need this major challenge.