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This analysis of '28 Weeks Later' will consider how the movie's five plot points create the story's deep structure. These discrete story points include the 'Inciting Incident' in Act 1, 'Turning Points 1 and 2' in Act 2, and the 'Crisis Decision' and 'Climax' in Act 3. Spoiler alert: this structural analysis will reveal crucial plot moments; you may prefer to read this after viewing the film.

This movie's back story is as follows: a husband, Don Harris (Robert Carlyle), and his wife, Alice (Catherine McCormack) are beset by infecteds in their home where they have barricaded themselves during the closing days of the contagion. Don was able to get out, but instead of going back to fight off Alice's attackers, he panicked and left her there. He flees their home, running like the wind, with other infecteds in hungry pursuit. He survives. Their children were abroad.

A Hollywood movie's Inciting Incident', which occurs usually in the first 1 / 2 hour, challenges the hero to respond to a new development or opportunity. To achieve that response, the hero must internally expand, irrevocably changing his life. The hero is then thrown into a series of escalating accommodations on his journey to understand and solve the Inciting Incident's original problem. This film's Inciting Incident occurs when the two children return, into a quarantine war zone, heavily fortified and manned by US military. This will give the filmmaker ample opportunity to indulge that peculiar European virus know as 'America-hatred'. The children, Andy (Makintosh Muggleton) and Sally (Amanda Walker), are to be re-united with the father.

Turning Point 1. When the kids go exploring by secretly exiting the quarantine area, against the rules, they grab a scooter and ride to their family home. Sally finds their mother in the upstairs master bedroom, who inexplicably survived the contagion. They quickly exit the house into the arms of waiting soldiers. Alice is later brought out and they are all returned to quarantine. A full family reunion is now in the cards, leading to family discord, as the kids now know that daddy abandoned their mother to their attackers. He had told them she was already dead when he left her during his escape.

A movie's Midpoint usually provides the story with a coherence and symmetry that the audience feels unconsciously, and for this reason is important structurally. This movie's Midpoint sees Dan visit Alice in quarantine. She is a passive carrier, immune herself, but she can pass

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