28 Weeks Later | 2007
- DIRECTOR |
- Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
The sequel to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... is set and filmed mainly in London but if you want to visit the many locations around the capital, I don't recommend trying to follow the route supposedly taken in the film – and definitely not in a cab. The survivors flit around the city randomly. It's the look of the locations that matters not geographical accuracy.
Like the previous film, it was based at Three Mills Studios, Three Mill Lane, in East London, not too far north from the Isle of Dogs where much of the film is set.
It starts out, though, with a prologue in the countryside north of London where married couple Don (Robert Carlyle) and Alice (Catherine McCormack) are holed up with a handful of other survivors in a remote farm. This place is old favourite Stockers Farm, Stockers Farm Road off Harefield Road in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.
This was previously seen as the isolated farm in which the title song is recorded in the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, as well as having appeared in Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian Children of Men, 2010's Never Let Me Go, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and many other films and TV shows. It's private property and inaccessible to the public.
When the infected inevitably descend on the farm, Don alone escapes in terror – riddled with guilt at leaving Alice behind.
Some months later, the plague seems to have subsided. The infected have died from starvation, mainland Britain is deserted and the first group of healthy evacuees are tentatively returned to a quarantined safe zone called 'District 1', supervised by a US-led NATO force.
'District 1' is the Isle of Dogs. It's not an island but a peninsula – a huge bite taken out of East London by a horseshoe-shaped meander in the River Thames. The Isle is home to the Canary Wharf Docklands development, London's financial hub since the 1980s and packed with modern office buildings.
With these high-rise blocks giving excellent surveillance for the army and with water on three sides, it's an ideal containment site.
Aerial shots show the plane carrying the new arrivals landing at London City Airport, which is indeed only just a couple of miles east of the Isle of Dogs.
Once on the ground, the airport on-screen becomes Stansted Airport, Bassingbourn Road, Stansted, in Essex about 40 miles northeast of London. A regular cinematic go-to, Stansted often stands for other airports in films such as Bridget Jones's Diary (as New York's JFK), Spider-Man: Far From Home (as Newark, New Jersey) and even in The Dark Knight Rises (as Gotham International). The usually busy traffic of this international airport had to be removed digitally.
The area around the Isle of Dogs is served by the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) which smoothly whisks the newcomers past the streets of Silvertown, where the military are still clearing houses of potentially hazardous waste, and past the O2 Arena (formerly the Millennium Dome), to their new home.
Among them are Don's two children Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), who are reunited with their Dad as they arrive at Canary Wharf DLR Station. They discover he's become a senior member of the team overseeing the resettlement.
Although there are wide shots and aerial views of Canary Wharf, most of the 'District 1' area is largely filmed around CityPoint highrise on Ropemaker Street E2, near Moorgate tube station.
You may recognise the buildings' striking 'eyelid' entrance as the 'IOS HQ' in 'Columbus, Ohio' in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, or from Woody Allen's Scoop, with Hugh Jackman. Its lobby also became the entrance to the glitzy 'Gotham City' restaurant where Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), in full-on playboy mode, rolls up with two women on his arms in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.
Much of the subsequent action sequences take place in the open piazza in front of CityPoint.
Despite all precautions the two children, missing their old home and wanting to retrieve a photograph of their mother whom they believe dead, abscond from the safe zone, furtively crossing South Quay Footbridge crossing the South Dock.
The geography is immediately off-kilter. Despite escaping through the southern border of the safe zone, they immediately find themselves running along deserted Poplar High Street and Woodstock Terrace, E14, north of the Isle of Dogs.
It gets crazier. Within a minute, they've crossed the whole of London to find themselves way up in Crouch End, N4. Here they discover the abandoned moped outside a pizza house, from which Tammy manages to retrieve its keys. This was Casa Bella Pizzeria, which became Delicate Gastrobar but (as of February 2025) now seems to be closed, 30 Crouch Hill the corner of Japan Crescent just east of Crouch Hill rail station.
Nevertheless, they're soon racing the moped south across Tower Bridge (all cinematic road journeys in London are obliged to cross Tower Bridge no matter where they're headed) and then passing the City of London's famous Gherkin high rise office block (which is back north of the bridge). OK, I'll stop pointing out the discrepancies. Just go with it.
They negotiate the abandoned cars left at the crossroads of St Mark's Rise and Sandringham Road in Dalston, E8. Coincidentally, in the background stands the house occupied by Johnny (David Thewlis) in Mike Leigh's scabrous1993 drama Naked.
From here, they zoom quickly through East Ham Jewish Cemetery, Marlow Road E6. A bit of trivia, this is the last resting place of Aaron Kozminsky, one of the handful of suspects dubiously claimed to have been the killer in countless "The Real Jack the Ripper" TV documentaries.
Their destination is 32 Therapia Road in Honor Oak, the old family home where Tammy and Andy discover their mother is still alive. If you're visiting the area, it's only a few minutes away from the cemetery with the old Gothic house used in the 1969 film adaptation of Joe Orton's dark farce Entertaining Mr Sloane.
Traced and taken back to quarantine, Tammy, Andy and Alice are held in 'District 1 Medical Centre', which is Trinity Tower, Thomas More Square off Vaughan Way, Wapping, London E1. This was where Jude Law worked in Mike Nichols' film of Patrick Marber's play Closer and was also the HQ of 'Renham Industries' in TV's The IT Crowd.
When Don visits his wife here, an unwise kiss leads to dire consequences. With the Rage back and the area put into lockdown, panicked people spill out into Thomas More Square, where army snipers are tasked with attempting to recognise and take out the infected.
The shot of the bodies lying on the ground after the massacre is back at the open piazza in front of CityPoint on Ropemaker Street.
Now teamed up with army sniper Doyle (Jeremy Renner) and medic Scarlet (Rose Byrne) the kids need to escape as 'Code Red' – extermination – is put into force.
With 'District 1' being intensively firebombed, the four escape through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, running beneath the Thames, just avoiding incineration as they pop out of the domed tunnel exit alongside the Cutty Sark sailing ship displayed in Greenwich.
A moment later they're passing under the railway arch on Stoney Street, alongside Borough Market, then crossing the Millennium Bridge toward St Paul's Cathedral.
A horde of the infected have already made it as far as Smithfield EC1 where they rampage through the central arcade of the old Smithfield Market building.
But by now our survivors have reached the West End, and are heading along Shaftesbury Avenue past the Apollo and Lyric Theatres and the corner of Great Windmill Street toward Piccadilly Circus.
Passing through Trafalgar Square, they somehow manage to arrive at 'Regent's Park' in northwest London.
In fact, the overgrown park with its abandoned funfair where they're due to rendezvous with the 'copter, is the grounds of Knebworth House near Stevenage in Hertfordshire. The grand Victorian neo-Gothic mansion, obviously not shown, is a regular screen star from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, the Ingrid Bergman 1956 Oscar-winner Anastasia, 2010 Oscar-winner The King's Speech with Colin Firth, biopic Wilde with Stephen Fry, Ken Russell's kitschy Lair of the White Worm (with a pre-stardom Hugh Grant), Gene Wilder's Haunted Honeymoon and the deliriously daft schlocker Horror Hospital.
With the sudden arrival of the infected, the 'copter is unable to touch down and the survivors decide to rendezvous on the pitch of Wembley Stadium, home of English football, where a safe landing is more likely.
Commandeering an abandoned car, they end up back south of Trafalgar Square in Westminster, roaring along Great Scotland Yard. Maybe they're looking for help from the Ministry of Magic which was situated here in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? Whatever, they're suddenly down at the southern end of Whitehall heading back north, when they're attacked with gunfire from a military helicopter. This being the very security-conscious heart of British government, the 'copter and the carnage it creates along Whitehall are entirely digital.
Now it's down into the underground system at Charing Cross Station, and its disused Jubilee Line escalators and platforms. These are often used as a film location, since it causes no disruption to everyday tube travel. Until 1999, this was the southern terminus of the Jubilee Line but, with the development of Docklands, the line's proposed route was changed to run south from Green Park and the Charing Cross platforms were closed.
This part of the station is still maintained, though off-limits to the public, used to try out new design ideas, to audition buskers (who need a licence to perform within the tube system) and – importantly – as a film location, seen in The Bourne Ultimatum, Skyfall and Morbius among many other productions.
The rail tunnel through which they run, though, is the much older and completely closed Aldwych Station on the Strand at Surrey Street WC2.
To visit both of these normally off-limits stations, you can take one of London Transport Museum's occasional Hidden London tours.
From the tunnel, they mysteriously emerge into the light at the entrance to the new Wembley Stadium (which wasn't actually completed at the time the film is set), South Way, Wembley, north of London.
The overgrown pitch, though, from which they are finally picked up, is that of Cardiff's Principality Stadium (formerly Millennium Stadium) the National Stadium of Wales in Cardiff, with a little digital tweaking. The stadium appears again in 2001 Hindi smash Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham...
The downbeat epilogue was a last minute addition, filmed guerrilla-style in Paris with 12 extras at 5am: the Eiffel Tower seen from the Palais de Chaillot.
