By: Nick Gambino
The filmmakers behind 28 Years Later shot on a $60 million budget, but despite having the money the earlier series installments didn’t have, they opted to shoot multiple scenes on an iPhone. It wasn’t a choice based on budgetary constraints, though I’m sure they didn’t mind saving money.
No, this was a creative choice to create a bold yet gritty look. To understand why this was important to the filmmakers, you have to look back at the first movie 28 Days Later and what it did for the zombie genre.
When it comes to zombie films you can count on a single hand the ones that shifted the genre in a new direction and defined what would become tropes.
This list would include of course the OG Night of the Living Dead which introduced the concept of a reanimated corpse that wants to eat you. Then there was the delightfully insane Return of the Living Dead which introduced a comedic tone as well as the brain-eating trope. Though, the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead perfect it with a perfect blend of humor and horror.
But then there’s 28 Days Later. This 2002 low-budget zombie film (although director Danny Boyle wouldn’t call it that, preferring to call them “infected”) popularized the sprinting zombie which would dominate this corner of cinema for the next two decades. To be clear, it wasn’t the first appearance of these types of athletic ghouls, but it was the first to highlight them so prominently and to set a real precedent.
You can see the fast-moving undead in Zombieland, World War Z, Train to Busan and the hugely popular series The Walking Dead. For a while there, gone were the slow-moving zombies with their arms stretched out, moaning for a taste of flesh.
But the use of erratic, running zombies isn’t the reason 28 Days Later was so influential. The creatives on this film were operating at a high level. Just look at the names involved – Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), Alex Garland (Ex Machina), Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) and Naomie Harris (Skyfall).
They made a choice in the early 2000s to use an everyman’s digital camera to create a gritty, low-fi look for the film. This was in an era where most movies were still shot on 35mm film. This made the movie feel more like a documentary, making it all the more unnerving. It was a gamble that paid off as it pulled in $82.8 million worldwide on a budget of only $8 million.
Fast forward to 2025, and the original writer and director have both returned to the series (they were only producers on 2007’s 28 Weeks Later) with 28 Years Later. They knew they would have to serve up another bold vision to justify a sequel over two decades later.
To do that they opted to use the iPhone 15 Pro Max which would allow for fast and dirty filmmaking as there wasn’t a lot of equipment or crew needed in these scenes. They also used it in more elaborate shots like in a bullet-time-esque effect where they employed 20 iPhones in a circular rig.
But it’s more than just about efficiency on set, using the iPhone with a DSLR lens created a unique look to the film that is unlike anything else we’ve seen before in the genre, keeping with the spirit of the original. You can see what that looks like in the above video.
28 Years Later is out now and is already getting positive reviews. Go see it and support movie theaters!
