28 Days Later Critic Reviews

At once an old-fashioned freakout and an environmental cautionary tale (mess with Mother Nature and she'll mess with you right back), the film combines two genre standbys -- lethal contagion and the undead -- and gives them a wicked, contemporary spin.Read the full review

This is finally the zombie flick as cautionary political tale, and as humanist parable. It's not the flesh-gouging zombie we have to worry about, the filmmakers suggest, but the soul-gouging zombie within.Read the full review

Rarely has so scary a thriller been so well made, and never has digital video -- by the English cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle -- been put to grittier use.Read the full review

Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland plumb the violence of the mind with slashing wit and shocking gravity. Happy nightmares. Read the full review

A swankily austere piece of jeepers-creepers sci-fi. Read the full review

Mr. Boyle has hardly lost his sly, provocative perversity or his ear for the rhythms of unchecked violence, but he does seem to be maturing. It's as if, in contemplating the annihilation of the human race, he has discovered his inner humanist.Read the full review

A damn-near great end-of-the-world zombie movie, terrifying on the basic heebie-jeebie level, respectful toward its B-movie forebears, and all the more unnerving for coming out in this fretful era of SARS and germ warfare.Read the full review

A tough, smart, ingenious movie that leads its characters into situations where everything depends on their (and our) understanding of human nature.Read the full review

The look of the film, shot on digital video, is haunting and gritty. The cleaner, prettier look of 35mm would have detracted from the immediacy and sense of foreboding created in this artful blend of sci-fi and pseudo-realism.Read the full review