I’ve likely already blogged about 28 Days Later but it does deserve a second mention in my opinion. It’s a movie that really made me think about the zombie apocalypse in a different way – what if zombies weren’t sluggish and easy to evade? And it was also the first film that truly depicted the virus as something that affected a person psychologically instead of just physically.

Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. The naive activists ignore the pleas of a scientist to keep the cages locked, with disastrous results. Twenty-eight days later, our protagonist, Jim, wakes up from a coma, alone, in an abandoned hospital. He begins to seek out anyone else to find London is deserted, apparently without a living soul. After finding a church, which had become inhabited by zombie like humans intent on his demise, he runs for his life. Selena and Mark rescue him from the horde and bring him up to date on the mass carnage and horror as all of London tore itself apart. This is a tale of survival and ultimately, heroics, with nice subtext about mankind’s savage nature.

My Rating: A

Interesting Facts: The film was shot almost entirely in sequence; only pickups and a few reshoots were shot out of sequence; the scene where Jim and Selena celebrate with Frank and Hannah was shot on September 11, 2001 (Danny Boyle said it felt extremely strange to shoot a celebratory scene on that particular day); and Stephen King bought out an entire showing of the film in New York City.

And now it’s time for the trailer…