’28 Days Later’ and Post-Rock: Scoring The Unlikely Heroes of the Apocalypse [Spins and Needles]
R.C. Jara
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In Alex Garland and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, a world engulfed by violence is not a product of the imagination. The film’s opening montage combines footage of actual rioting with staged beatings interspersed. To the filmmakers’ credit, the latter is difficult to parse. As the camera pans away from the CCTV monitors to show us the laboratory where an experimental “rage” virus is being developed, the effect of this programming does not dissipate. The foggy, omnipotent gaze carries over into the immediate reality of the film. Shooting exclusively on MiniDV camcorders, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle pushes the modest hardware to its limit. His approach embraces deep shadows, high shutter speed, and clever utility of day-for-night techniques. Informed by artistic fealty to Garland’s script as well as the production’s budgetary limitations, this oppressive aesthetic is key to our immersion.
A month after the release of the virus, London has been decimated. Walking alongside Cillian Murphy’s Jim, a bicycle courier recently woken from a coma, the somber tone of the film begins to take shape. Shooting on celluloid could have effortlessly reproduced the glorious details of dawn breaking over the capital. But digital panoramas strip the scene of all romantic artifice. By this point, the audience is provided with enough exposition so that they can fill in the blanks. Though exactly how limited our perception really is still has yet to sink in.
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Replicas of Big Ben and the Union Jack pile up with other waste, while a tipped-over double-decker bus adds another layer of tarnished iconography. No sooner does Jim enter Piccadilly Circus than we are pulled into his vertiginous headspace. There is no one alive to help Jim process this tragedy. And the soundtrack, provided by orchestral collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor (henceforth GY!BE) swells with brutal percussion and a tense string section.
The post-apocalyptic setting of 28 Days Later is presented as a chasm of loneliness. The end is extremely fucking nigh, indeed; this is what it looks and sounds like. “The Sad Mafioso,” a movement from GY!BE’s 1998 opus F# A# Infinity overwhelms the Piccadilly montage to portray the stunning realization of waking up to literal hell on earth. Boyle has stated that GY!BE’s music was a driving factor in the film’s style from the jump. More than providing the soundtrack to a parallel story, however, the band’s first album honors its own cinematic priorities. The sonic canvas of F# A# Infinity incorporates narration, vocal samples, and a melding of different genres to articulate a vision of societal decay. Its tactile qualities reject passive consumption. And, much like Dod Mantle’s cinematography, the raw production benefits the diffusion of its themes.
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F# A# Infinity and 28 Days Later exist as documents of the fragile years leading up to, and succeeding, the new millennium. The ambition of GY!BE’s first album, in particular, fed the burgeoning post-rock subgenre, which quickly became characterized by evocative soundscapes. Eschewing formal compositions, F# A# Infinity functions as the score to both a non-existent film based on a screenplay written by band member Efrim Menuck, and the film itself. Its bombastic rhythms work in tandem with elegiac instrumentation. And the band’s punk ethos speaks volumes even with sparse lyrical content.
Transposed to a horror setting, the music fills a less enigmatic presence but Garland and Boyle’s film retains all political intent. Not least because 28 Days Later holds an uncomfortable position as a pre-emptive reflection of the incoming decade. Validating, in a warped sense, the bleakness of the future predicted by GY!BE themselves. One in which the collapse of governing systems and technological infrastructure isn’t just inevitable, but instigated.
A post-apocalyptic album about the crumbling West and a zombie film set in the UK are two concepts practically bound together. Pessimism to both works is like carbon to all living matter: inherent and vital. Jim finds a postcard on a missing persons bulletin containing a verse from the Old Testament: “I will make your grave for you are vile” (Nahum 1:14). Coupled with the graffiti in the church, this verse establishes judgemental rhetoric to the nature of the virus. Similarly, an overarching thread in F# A# Infinity is the realization that humankind is responsible for its own undoing. Impenetrable as GY!BE’s music may seem however, the band is committed to envisioning a future that has the potential to bring communities together via a shared struggle.
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Along with the dire voice behind its opening narration, F# A# Infinity is punctuated with moments of clarity that suggest hope not only has a place in periods of distress, it is absolutely mandatory for survival. 28 Days Later packs a furious punch nearly an hour into its runtime before providing levity. Even so, heartbreak often eclipses meager wins for our core group of survivors; which includes reluctant hero Selena (Naomie Harris) and father-daughter duo Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns). Taking over from GY!BE, the music of the film is curated delicately to fit these emotional counterpoints.
A standout rendition of “Abide With Me” by Perri Alleyne plays when Jim discovers his parents dead in their home hardly a day after his first brush with the infected. It’s a devastating scene that hardens the character. His empathy and disbelief at the state of things are also captured in John Murphy’s original score. Arguably the film’s protagonist, Jim nonetheless is part of a group that makes decisions as a whole. Once they are introduced, the music follows suit.
Boyle’s filmmaking acumen favored an ensemble cast long before 28 Days Later and his grasp of camaraderie shines in two key scenes. In the grocery store, where the film pays tribute to the original Dawn of the Dead, elation runs high to the sound of Grandaddy’s “A.M. 180.” And as the group takes respite by the countryside, Brian Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent)” momentarily covers the open wound of the reality they’re living. Both scenes are wistful after repeat viewings. They serve as reminders of the humanity that refuses to die even in the face of man-made catastrophe. Yet, the script doesn’t let this joy settle in for too long.
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The back half of 28 Days Later is marked by the death of Frank. Scored by Murphy, the lamenting voices on the eponymous track sing in perfect pitch to the horror experienced by surviving group members, especially Hannah. All illusions of finding peace in the rubble come to an abrupt end once a transformed Frank is shot to death by soldiers in front of his daughter. From here, Boyle takes pushes to the mansion/military base where Selena’s early warnings against looking for “an answer to infection” are affirmed. To quote the character: “Plans are pointless. Staying alive is as good as it gets.”
Selena doesn’t merely occupy the role of a contrarian in the film. Her blunt outlook provides the most insight into the world pre-infection. No system was reliable in the past, and this ethos is significant to her survival. Selena is more receptive to community as the film progresses. Harris plays the character with a balance of traits that humanize her beyond the “strong Black woman” archetype. As elaborated on by Dr. Kinitra D. Brooks in “The Importance of Neglected Intersections: Race and Gender in Contemporary Zombie Texts and Theories,” Selena’s complexity keeps her from being relegated to a limiting role. Her arc is steady and intense. If she has anything resembling a theme in the film, it’s Murphy’s often misappropriated “In the House – In A Heartbeat.”
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The track opens with two reserved piano notes in a minor key, a brooding motif that could be played eternally. Conflict intensifies as the instrumental arrangement fills out. Its structure and timbre encapsulate the entire film up to the mansion siege. Survival is a mean business in the world of the film, and more so in its final act. It requires blood. Like “In the House – In A Heartbeat,” Selena endures quietly but restlessly. Part of what binds her to this track is a propensity to take care of business. Her thoughtfulness lives simultaneously with her capacity to kill out of self-preservation. She makes no bones about hacking a man to pieces once he has been bitten in a struggle with the infected.
Selena embodies the controlled anger where the song ramps up its distorted guitars and battering drums. Though we live with Jim through a harrowing transformation, it’s Selena who has the final say over his fate. And it is she who delivers the line from which the track takes the latter half of its name.
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Selena waits longer than a heartbeat to respond to Jim, even after he exhibits the ferocious habits of an infected person. Her decision to put down her machete and meet him with a kiss is neither a betrayal nor tonally jarring. It is a sign of relief and she acts with conviction. Beneath this chaotically romantic moment, “In the House – In A Heartbeat” develops a softer key theme. By the end of 28 Days Later, all pillars of civilization are proven to have failed and the heroes do not pull off a feat that changes the course of the infection. In an act of solidarity, they instead fight to keep each other alive. Calming as the final refrain of the track may be, it acknowledges the sense of loss maintained throughout the film.
To the last frame, the story is open-ended. It sees a group of incredibly lucky, able-bodied people maim their way to a remote cabin where they can only hope to be rescued and relocated. By whom and to where? The sequel answers this to a terrifying degree. But as a singular narrative, 28 Days Later persists because it understands the harmonies that make life bittersweet.
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