The 28 Days Later opening scene filmed in an empty London features some of the most iconic moments. Made on a shoe-string budget of $8 million, 28 Days Later didn’t have the resources to shut down huge areas of London in order to film its opening moments, which feature Cillian Murphy’s bicycle courier Jim wandering through deserted streets after waking up from a coma a month after the catastrophe. The film received praise thanks to its authentic feeling, with many scenes seeming completely realistic even though London was completely operational during filming.
The movie brought a different take on what was essentially the zombie genre. While these were not zombies, but instead infected individuals during a pandemic in London, 28 Days Later followed the same format. Only a select few humans remained alive in the city, and they had to survive the infected as they tore through the survivors. With so many people either ᴅᴇᴀᴅ or infected, it was important for Danny Boyle to make the city look empty, which seems impossible in one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world. What is impressive is that he not only pulled it off but did so in a manner that looked like London was empty.
How The 28 Days Later Empty London Scenes Were Filmed
While the opening to 28 Days Later and The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ are strikingly similar, they were filmed in very different ways. The empty London in 28 Days Later didn’t use any CGI, and the scenes were achieved using a simple technique — waking up earlier. In a 2019 interview, Cillian Murphy revealed how these tricky scenes were filmed (via GQ). The crew needed to begin work in the early hours of the morning and wait for dawn to break to start filming before the city got busy. 28 Days Later used many small, easily maneuverable cameras, allowing the crew to gather footage quickly and with a realistic texture, with the early hours of the morning providing the eerie silence that makes these scenes so chilling.
“They would ask people to stop walking, and then the art department would come in and dress it really quickly. And they had cameras all over the place.”
London’s Westminster Bridge is familiar thanks to the landmarks that surround it, with Big Ben on one side and the London Eye on the other. Filming scenes on Westminster Bridge that are supposed to show a desolate London is an incredible feat since the Bridge is situated right in the center of the city and is one of the busiest thoroughfares because of its proximity to the Houses of Parliament and the South Bank. 28 Days Later’s harrowing scenes on Westminster Bridge display the emptiness of abandoned London, and is perhaps the most iconic sH๏τ in 28 Days Later, proving that Danny Boyle’s unconventional and тιԍнт-budget filming techniques certainly paid off.
Why 28 Days Later’s Empty London Scenes Make The Film
The purpose of 28 Days Later’s bridge scenes was both to introduce the audience to Jim, and also to introduce Jim to his new, shocking reality. These moments set the tone for the rest of the film, delivering the toned-down and stripped-back feel that carried on from start to finish. These initial scenes also worked to show the desolation that was caused by the rage virus, as it’s practically unheard of to see London with nobody wandering around or any traffic on the streets at all. It’s the opening moments of 28 Days Later that make it regarded as one of the greatest British horror films of all time, especially down to the surprising emptiness of the city and because of Murphy’s fantastic performance as Jim in these moments.
Other filming locations in 28 Days Later include the Trafalgar Park mansion in Salisbury and a rural cottage in Ennerdale, Cumbria, though it was surely the scenes taking place in Central London and the M1 Motorway that were the most difficult to pull off. Despite their difficulty, it’s the eeriness of these moments that make this film so watchable, again and again. Murphy and Imogen Poots from 28 Weeks Later have both expressed interest in reprising their roles, so the empty world laid out in 28 Days Later could continue to develop, though they may have a bigger budget this time around.
28 Days Later’s Empty London Shows What Can Be Achieved Without CGI
The hard work Danny Boyle undertook to make London look empty in 28 Days Later opened some eyes in Hollywood on how to film scenes without paying so much for CGI. Not only could this save money, but it would also look more realistic when compared to obviously computer-generated empty cities. One example of a movie that followed in its footsteps was the movie, I Am Legend, based on the book by Richard Matheson.
Not only do the two movies share a common trait in subverting horror movie tropes, with I Am Legend using vampires in an original manner, but they also both showed a major metropolitan area empty — without using too much CGI. I Am Legend showed an empty New York City similar to the empty London in 28 Days Later by spending $40 million to shut down actual NYC streets to film there. While it didn’t save money, it did add authenticity to the sH๏τs, with a little CGI added to eliminate anyone who wandered into a scene.
However, while perhaps grander in scope than the 28 Days Later London, and arguably better use of CGI than I Am Legend‘s now incredibly dated-looking infected, both achieve the same effect. Which is a better vision of an apocalyptic city is incredibly subjective. That being said, the fact that it’s such a close debate shows that 28 Days Later proved — at the advent of computer-generated images appearing wholesale in movies — why CGI would never be a subsтιтute for good, solid film-making.
