Van and Lyle are joined by historian and Slate Senior Editor Rebecca Onion to talk through the entire 28 Days Later trilogy, from its early aughts origins to its apocalyptic present. Together they explore the first film’s anti-militarist edge, arriving just as the War on Terror began to unfold, and how its disaffected rage gave way to the bombastic sensibilities of the 2007 sequel.

If the original cast British soldiers as the truest threats to civilization, the second leans into Global War on Terror aesthetics, gathering around a Delta Force commando as protagonist. Then again, it still preserves a kernel of the earlier critique: That security operations have a way of turning from containment to extermination.

The group breaks down this shift through a striking bit of dialogue from Rose Byrne’s Army medical officer, which lays out a three-stage process—identify the infection, contain the infection, and when the containment fails, exterminate all the brutes—that mirrors countless historical escalations, from Cold War brinkmanship to post-9/11 imperial overreach to the genocide now unfolding in Gaza.

They debate whether 28 Weeks Later offers any coherent politics at all, or simply mirrors our own contradictions. They also reflect on the beauty of Cillian Murphy, the chemistry between Murphy and Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson’s wrenching turn, and the creative imprint of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland; clearly felt in the first and final films, and sorely missed in the second. Most of all, they dig into the wild third installment—28 Years Later—and how its mystical, cosmic pivot late in the film, when Ralph Fiennes assumes center stage, reorients the entire franchise around memory, mourning, and what it means to love in a world on fire.

Further Reading

Rebecca’s Website

Rebecca’s Author Page at Slate

“28 Years Later and the Social Life of Catastrophe,” by Eileen Jones

An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

“Illusions of Containment,” by Tom Stevenson

Teaser from the Episode

28 Days Later Trailer

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