Description: What does a person choose when faced with a life and death decision? More significantly, what does a person choose… their life or that of a loved one? The movie 28 Weeks Later gives a man a decision to make, a decision that tests a human beings moral standings when faced with possible death. Keep in mind that it does contain spoilers to the movie.
The ethical actions behind the gore and the blood of the movie 28 Weeks Later, which is the sequel to the original 28 Days Later, is actually very applicable. One man’s actions can an ever lasting affect for those around him as shown in this movie. The beginning of the movie starts off with this couple Donald and Alice along with several other survivors staying this cabin basically to wait it out until help arrives. During dinner they hear a boy knocking on the door and screaming so that they can let him in. Alice insists they open the door and let him in. The boy was indeed not one of the infected and was let in. But because they let the boy in the infected now attack the house. Breaking into the house the infected proceed to basically kill everyone in sight. Alice runs upstairs along with the little boy while Donald tries to hold off the infected downstairs but realizes it’s pointless and that there is just too many.
Running upstairs Donald is looking for Alice and finds her trying to save the boy who is apparently stuck in a closet. At that moment one of the infected breaks into the room and Donald grabs Alice telling her to leave the boy. Alice refuses and tells Donald to help her but instead Donald leaves her running into another room leaving Alice to fend for herself against the infected. At the moment that Donald turns his back on his wife he breaks the virtues of loyalty, fidelity, and trustworthiness. In the movie Donald breaks all these virtues the moment he turns his back on his wife. He betrays her in the most profound and hurt way. The other alternative, which he could have done, is stayed behind and helped his wife. If he would have stayed behind the chances of him getting away wouldn’t have been as great but it still would have been the moral thing to do in the situation.
In a sense the movie seems to flat out play the consequences of one man’s actions. If Donald would have never just left his wife for dead and instead would have gone back to try to save her then I believe the movie wouldn’t have played out the way it did. It is like karma in a way that if you do something negative or bad then you will get it back ten folds. It is because of Donald leaving his wife for dead that the children then feel the need to go back to their old house and get a picture of her. If the children wouldn’t have felt the need to go back then they would not have found her and so she would have died along with the virus she is carrying.
Later Donald uses his id card to get into the room where they have his wife without considering the consequences of his actions. Because of Donald selfishness he needs to ask his wife for forgiveness and ends up kissing up her. He does not stop to think that if they still have her locked then maybe something is wrong with her; he just follows his own emotions. So again because of his selfishness he then gets the virus from his wife who he ends up killing anyway and it is all because of him that the virus once again resurfaces. The movie plays out the consequences quite fantastically – if he had no left his wife then she wouldn’t have gotten infected then she wouldn’t have passed it on to him then he wouldn’t have spread the virus to the remaining survivors including his own son.
One is supposed to stick to one’s loved ones no matter what the circumstances. When Donald married Alice I’m sure he had to say the marriage vows – in sickness and in health until death do us part. Sure the vows don’t say even if a zombie is trying to eat us but I think that is pretty much a given. Alice full heartily trusted the man and he just turned around to run away leaving her to fend for herself – even in a way serving as a distraction for him to escape. If that would have been me in that situation In all honesty I have to say that I would have stayed behind to help my spouse. Even if my spouse really does tell me to just save myself I wouldn’t be able to. I can’t imagine living a life knowing that I could have maybe done something to help my spouse live. Who I am as a person just forbids me from betraying someone in such a distasteful manner – it is like sacrificing someone else life for your own. You just can’t leave someone for being dead because as the movie shows it could come back to haunt you.