Movie Review by Jeff Anglea
Posted: June 2003

Critic Score: B-

Be Thankful For Everything, For Soon There Will Be Nothing...

"...a tough, smart, ingenious movie that leads its characters into situations where everything depends on their (and our) understanding of human nature." - Roger Ebert

"Danny Boyle reinvents the zombie horror film an it's scary as hell" - Daily Mail

These days it's pretty difficult to make an "original" zombie flick but I definitely liked this movie! Combining elements of George Romero's Living Dead trilogy and an old Vincent Price horror film called "The Last Man on Earth" (1964), overall I thought "28 Days Later" was cool and stylishly entertaining.

Every zombie movie has the classic theme - zombies are taking over the world and the story focuses on a small group of people struggle to survive. As you can see, there's not much there to work with. The challenge in making a good zombie flick is creating characters and scenarios that are thought provoking and entertaining, and that's exactly what writer Alex Garland did. Some moviegoers may have wanted more character development from the movie, but I think it was clear who was who without going into more detail.

As for the story, I enjoyed the fact that everything in the movie was explained. Especially the subject on how the zombies came to be, a topic largely ignored in Romero's Living Dead trilogy. Now don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of Romero's work but I found it odd that he never really explained how the whole tragedy began and it remains a mystery.

In Romero's first film, "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), it was reported that NASA detected high levels of radiation on a satellite that was headed back to Earth but never arrived…Since the satellite never returned to Earth, scientists and news reporters speculated that the radiation might have been responsible for the mass murders but nothing conclusive.

In Romero's second and third films, "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) and "Day of the Dead" (1985), characters expressed religious beliefs and threw out scientific theories but again, nothing concrete about the origin of the zombies. The movies focused more on why the dead feed on the living and on the fall of civilization, rather then the origin of the zombie holocaust. In many respects, "28 Days Later" is the opposite of Romero's zombie movies.

Much to my surprise, the zombies in "28 Days Later" were not the standard slow moving ghouls that we have grown accustomed to seeing. Garland's zombies are a combination of the creatures in "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) and the fast-paced zombies in "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985). They only attacked at night or in dark places and they rarely came out during the day unless provoked. Plus, these zombies hauled ass! They ran, jumped, and climbed over anything and everything to get to their prey and that element alone gave the movie an ominous, unsettling feeling. It would have been awesome to see the zombies take over the city, but unfortunately that part of the story was left to the imagination.

"28 Days Later" is not a "hardcore" scary zombie movie. I'd say the scare and gore factor is a notch above "Resident Evil."

If you enjoy zombie flicks or horror movies in general, keep an open mind and enjoy the movie for what it is.