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  "path": "/day-of-the-triffids-28-days-later-inspiration-explained",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-07T14:15:01.000Z",
  "site": "https://nofilmschool.com",
  "tags": [
    "28 days later",
    "Zombie movies",
    "George A. Romero’s Dead movies",
    "Village of the Damned",
    "The Rocky Horror Picture Show",
    "King Kong",
    "The Guardian",
    "Edgar Wright’s The World’s End"
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  "textContent": "\n\n\n\n2002’s 28 Days Later, which was directed by Danny Boyle from a screenplay by Alex Garland, is a post-apocalyptic classic about the desperate survivors of a rage virus that has swept through the British Isles, turning humans into hyper-adrenalized, violent monsters.\n\nThe movie simultaneously revitalized the zombie genre and reinvented it, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In addition to drawing inspiration from George A. Romero’s Dead movies and current events, including terrorism and mad cow disease, __28 Days Later__ pays homage to 1963’s __The Day of the Triffids__ , without which it certainly wouldn’t exist in its current form.\n\n## What Is __Day of the Triffids__?\n\nAt first glance, __The Day of the Triffids__ seems like an unusual movie to have inspired a seminal zombie classic (while debate rages about whether the Infected in __28 Days Later__ are “true” zombies as they are not literally undead, we will be using the terms interchangeably, as their function in the story is the same as in any classic zombie movie). __The Day of the Triffids__ is a classic 1963 British sci-fi movie adapted from the 1951 novel of the same name by John Wyndham (who is also known for having penned __The Midwich Cuckoos__ , which was adapted into the 1960 classic Village of the Damned).\n\nThe book and the movie both follow a meteor shower causing the majority of the population of the Earth to go blind, leaving them vulnerable to attack from sentient, moving, carnivorous plants called Triffids that shoot poison from their mouthlike openings. The movie is so classic, in fact, that it inspired a line in Richard O’Brien’s “Science Fiction, Double Feature,” the song that opens The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The tune is jam-packed with references to the classic horror and sci-fi movies to which the movie and the original West End musical are homages, including the line “and I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills.”\n\n‘The Day of the Triffids’ (1963)Credit: Rank Organisation and Allied Artists\n\nIn addition to meriting a “Science Fiction, Double Feature” mention alongside titles including __The Invisible Man__ , King Kong, and __The Day the Earth Stood Still__ , __The Day of the Triffids__ is a confirmed inspiration for __28 Days Later__. This was revealed by Danny Boyle when he was speaking to The Guardian while promoting the movie’s first sequel, 2007’s __28 Weeks Later__.\n\nHe specifically cited the movie’s early scene where hero Bill Masen (Howard Keel) wakes up after an eye surgery and finds both the hospital and the country in disarray, having missed the beginning of the end of the world while under sedation. This is directly referenced in the opening scene of __28 Days Later__ , which follows bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) waking up from a coma and wandering through an empty London.\n\n‘28 Days Later’ (2002)Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures\n\n## The Day of the Triffids Inspirations Go Much Deeper\n\nWhile the initial setup of the story is the specific inspiration that was mentioned by Boyle, there are many echoes of __Day of the Triffids__ in Alex Garland’s screenplay for __28 Days Later__. This includes the fact that it directly ties into a longstanding British tradition of apocalyptic fiction, which includes __War of the Worlds__ , __The Day the Earth Caught Fire__ , and even the notorious cult classic __Zardoz__ , going on to include later titles like Edgar Wright’s The World’s End.\n\nHowever, another direct inspiration that __28 Days Later__ clearly draws from __The Day of the Triffids__ is the idea of disparate survivors forging a found family amid the widespread devastation. In the movie, Bill meets other sighted survivors with whom he eventually forges a deep bond, namely a woman named Christine Durant (Nicole Maurey), who has been helping out a group of blind survivors at a French __château__ , and the young schoolgirl Susan (Janina Faye), who becomes their surrogate daughter.\n\nThe way their familial relationship develops almost exactly mirrors the way that Jim forms a bond with fellow survivor Selena (Naomie Harris) and the newly orphaned Hannah (Megan Burns) in __28 Days Later__.\n\nAdditionally, the 2002 movie’s subtext about the military industrial complex draws direct inspiration from the original __Day of the Triffids__ novel. While the somewhat old-fashioned book is less thoroughly critical of this approach, it does ultimately find severe flaws with the mission of Beadley, a man who attempts to form a polygamist cult of survivors who enslave the blind to perform menial tasks while they attempt to repopulate the Earth.\n\n__28 Days Later__ takes a similar, though more aggressive, approach when it comes to its presentation of the military compound where Jim, Selena, and Hannah find themselves taking shelter. The group of surviving soldiers is led by Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston), whose attempts to cling to the rigid social structures of a dying world by creating an exaggeratedly patriarchal society go horribly wrong. Because this involves a planned sexual assault of Selena and Hannah and an attempted assassination of Jim, it exposes the fact that the pre-apocalypse society already had a dirty and violent underbelly that has been exposed by the rage virus rather than corrupted by it.",
  "title": "The 1963 Sci-Fi Movie That Directly Inspired ‘28 Days Later’"
}