28 Days Later.... UCI, Merry Hill

From the archive, first published Wednesday 8th Feb 2006.

BLOODTHIRSTY zombies which actually move faster than a drugged tortoise? What a great premise for a horror film, I thought.

What a shame then that the beasts, actually living humans infected with a rage virus transmitted by blood, are so underused in this film from Danny Boyle, the Trainspotting director, and writer Alex Garland, author of The Beach.

More often than not the threat is more imagined than real, which in fairness really cranks up the tension in a tremendously atmospheric opening.

Coma victim Jim, played by unknown Cillian Murphy, wakes up in an eerily deserted London to find virtually the whole population has been wiped out by the virus, inadvertently unleashed by animal rights activists 28 days previously.

His sense of isolation and the fear of attack from screeching, infected, red-eyed lunatics at any moment (nothing new there for London) as he stumbles around an empty capital will stay with the viewer for a long time.

But the film loses its way when Jim and a handful of other survivors head for an army outpost at Manchester - and a new set of problems.

Too little is seen of the "zombies" and while there are plenty of moments to make you jump (the worst of which is provided by, believe it or not, a car alarm), George A Romero's classics are still better for instilling in the audience a sense of creeping dread.

Relatively adventurous filmmaking like this, though, is to be applauded and the "ghost-town" London is portrayed fabulously on the big screen. AMD

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