By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Long before M. Night Shyamalan turned plants into killers in The Happening, and a few years before George Romero turned horror on its head with Night of the Living Dead, a British sci-fi horror classic introduced the world to the Triffids. Adapting the hit book of the same name, The Day of the Triffids, maybe about aliens instead of zombies, but it had a lasting impression on zombie horror for 60 years. In particular, 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead were heavily influenced by the 1963 film.
Humans Are The Real Monster
The Day of the Triffids starts out with a strange meteor shower that blinds everyone who sees it, sparing Bill, a Naval officer who was recovering in a hospital when it occurred. The sequence of Bill wandering out of the hospital onto the empty streets of the city is one of those scenes that you likely never realized was an homage. Danny Boyle made sure to shoot Cillian Murphy in the exact same way when making 28 Days Later, but that’s not the only scene that the two films have in common.
“Humans are the real monster” has become the expected message in most horror movies, and 28 Days Later gets this across with the third act, the arrival of the soldiers set up in an abandoned home. It’s similar to the same sequence in the 1951 novel, The Day of the Triffids, right down to using the zombies/triffids as a weapon. The film made significant changes from the novel down to changing the ending to something more hopeful, but between the two, you can see the DNA of 28 Days Later.
While the film version of The Day of the Triffids has little in common with the novel, neither makes it clear exactly where the Triffids came from. There’s an implication in the novel that they are the result of Soviet experimentation, but then the film includes spores spread by the mysterious meteor shower, making it seem as if they are an invading alien species. What both versions do include is a young girl, Susan, whom Bill befriends and defends as they wander the countryside seeking a safe haven.
60 Years Later
The Day of the Triffids isn’t a traditional zombie movie, but yet it helped establish the template that the genre would follow. The 1963 film currently enjoys a 78 percent fresh critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to a lackluster 51 percent audience rating, but that’s with over 5,000 audience reviews of a 61-year-old movie, and it’s still a better rating than most of the sci-fi films released in 2024. Later adaptations would be more faithful to the original novel, including the 2009 mini-series with Jason Priestly, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, and Eddie Izzard, but none have had the long-lasting yet underrated impact of the original.
George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the most influential zombie film of all time, debuted five years after The Day of the Triffids, but together, the two films helped launch a horror sub-genre that’s still popular today. In the last 20 years, zombie movies that deconstruct the genre and turn tropes sideways have risen in popularity, from Shaun of the Dead to The Dead Don’t Die, with mixed results. But through it all, the 1963 British sci-fi horror film has quietly been influencing countless films and novels.
Before you re-watch 28 Days Later to prepare for 28 Years Later, do yourself a favor and stream The Day of the Triffids for free on Tubi, Philo, or Crackle, and see if you can spot the homages and references.
Leave a Reply