Why 28 Days Later Is Going Viral, and Why You Should Just Buy the DVD

If you’re a horror fan, a physical media junkie, or just terminally online, you might have seen stories and viral Facebook posts about the sudden disappearance of 28 Days Later. The film, from director Danny Boyle, introduced Cillian Murphy to the world, and while its star just won a Best Actor trophy at the Academy Awards, the role that made him famous is surprisingly difficult to watch without plunking down some cash. After Disney and Hulu lost the rights to 28 Days Later, Sony — the current holders of the rights — simply declined to put it back up on streaming. 

It’s also out of print, both on DVD and Blu-ray. That has led to all those viral posts, and some breathless articles about how sellers on eBay are routinely asking $100 or more for copies of the 28 Days Later Blu-ray.

Those Blu-rays aren’t worth it, though — and not just because you can still buy the HD version of the movie digitally, but because the DVD is still pretty cheap.

Cards on the table: the guy writing this article is a huge advocate for physical media. Some of it is all the same reasons you hear everywhere — they can’t take it away from you or change it, for example. It’s the best presentation, with no compression, even if you aren’t on the preferred hardware of your streaming service of choice. Some of it is more personal — as a former video store manager, I have decades of emotional investment in the collection I’ve cultivated, lost, and rebuilt, and I have fond memories of walking the aisles at Emerald City Video in Syracuse, helping my customers find hidden gems in the huge and often weird collection the store had to offer. So for the sake of argument, we’re going to acknowledge that you can buy copies on platforms like Prime Video, Apple, and Fandango At Home (God, what a terrible name) — and then move quickly on from that.

So, let’s say you’re a little wary of buying a digital copy after having just seem the free-streaming version abruptly disappear with no clear return plan. Do you go DVD — which as of this writing, costs around $15, and as little as $6 on Walmart’s website if you want to gamble on your aspect ratio — or do you splurge for one of those absurdly expensive Blu-rays floating around?

Well, let’s dig into some context really quick before making the call.

28 Days Later was a profoundly independent film, but it was also a huge commercial success, it spawned a sequel titled 28 Weeks Later, which starred Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, and Rose Byrne. That movie wasn’t nearly the success — critically or commercially — that 28 Days Later had been, and the rumored 28 Months Later never got off the ground. Earlier this year, though, Sony inked a deal to make 28 Years Later, a movie that will return to the apocalypse-ravaged world of the franchise and see where it is nearly three decades on.

It’s likely that acquisition that caused the movie to drop off streaming, as Sony prepares for the sequel, which will reportedly bring back Boyle and Murphy, neither of whom reprised their roles in 28 Weeks Later. It would not be surprising to see either a digital or even physical 4K release of the original movie ahead of the release of 28 Years Later. So, if you can hang on just a little longer, you can probably snag a Blu-ray or 4K for significantly less than the current generation of Blu-rays on the internet. That version, though, will probably not be the best possible experience.

Here’s the thing: The gritty, low-fi look of the movie can’t really be upgraded. Somebody might use AI smoothing to “clean up” the movie for 4K, but you’re probably going to end up with an uncanny valley the likes of which you’ve only seen in the True Lies 4K transfer. As noted in a great writeup at JoBlo, the movie was actually filmed on a Canon XL-1, which has a standard definition resolution of 720×576. That means the Blu-ray is just an upconversion, and any prospective 4K conversion would be even more so. When you shoot on film, there’s a lot more flexibility to create actual, higher-resolution scans of the film as cameras and processors get better and more powerful. With something shot on digital…well, there’s not much you can do. It is what it is. Pointing a better camera at it can’t help you.

Which brings us back to that original question: is it worth an extra $85 to get a Blu-ray copy of 28 Days Later? Almost definitely not. The sound might be marginally better, and the upconversion may have brought something out that isn’t readily apparent to most casual viewers, but it’s more likely than not the DVD is as good — or at least as true to the original vision of the filmmakers. Boyle could, at least in theory, have shot the movie on film if he really wanted to be able to make it look better 20 years down the line. Yeah, digital was much cheaper and the movie was very independent, but it isn’t as though Boyle hasn’t bought himself some goodwill with Trainspotting and The Beach by then.

So, in short: go buy yourself a copy of 28 Days Later on DVD. It’s as good as the movie is likely to look, and it’ll cost you less than a copy of the new Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey steelbook at Walmart.