When Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later came out, it revolutionized the zombie genre with a great performance by Cillian Murphy Now, ten years later, fans think they’ve spotted Murphy in the trailer for the latest installment of the franchise, 28 Years Later.
Murphy wasn’t in the previous film, 28 Weeks Later, which focused instead on the story of Don (Robert Carlyle) and his family. The fate of his character, Jim, was left up in the air. In fact, it’s been left up in the air ever since the first movie, which ends in an ambiguous way.
Jim is the audience’s viewpoint character as he wakes from a coma and explores a horrifying zombie-infested Britain. He eventually meets up with Selena (Naomie Harris) and Hannah (Megan Burns) two other survivors. A harrowing incident takes place where Jim has to save the girls from being forced into sexual slavery by members of the military, but the three are eventually able to escape. After that, they retreat to a cabin and try to alert an RAF jet. The film ends with the jet seemingly seeing them – and that’s it. But it’s been years in-universe. Could poor Jim have become a zombie in that time?
Well, fans think it’s certainly looking likely. The chilling trailer for 28 Years Later (set to an arrangement of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem Boots) features a one-second shot of what very well might be a zombified Jim. The zombie has Murphy’s exact facial features under the zombie grimace, and well – what better way to horrify audiences than having your sympathetic original lead turn into a member of the killer infected?
Fans are carefully analyzing the trailer on social media, desperate to trace the identity of this one hapless zombie. Because if it is Jim, that raises another question – what happened to Selena and Hannah? Are they dead or zombified as well? Naomie Harris and Megan Burns don’t appear on the cast list for the sequel movie, but then again, neither does Murphy.
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It seems fairly likely that the zombie is Jim if you take into account comments that Sony Motion Pictures Group chairman Tom Rothman made back in May. When asked by Deadline if Cillian Murphy would appear in 28 Years Later following his Oscar win for Oppenheimer, Rothman answered, “Yes, but in a surprising way and in a way that grows, let me put it that way.” And Jim being a zombie now is certainly surprising. X is full of people reacting to the news.
However, one intriguing picture is also going around. Some people have been posting a picture of Murphy on the 28 Years Later set, where he is decidedly not zombified.
And a quick reverse image search leads back to The Whitehaven News, which confirms that Murphy was indeed filming scenes for the movie in the Lake District in September. But, if you focus on the blurry shot from filming, you’ll notice that Murphy seems to have a bloody injury near his neck. Is this what turns him into a zombie?
Well, we’ll just have to wait to find out. 28 Years Later is set for release next year, June 20, 2025.
Published: Dec 10, 2024 09:42 am