Unlike most people, I grew tired of the zombie genre long before most of the general public. I felt as though the genre had already been milked dry by the time this film was released in 2002 and the only reason I went to see it is because the film I had intended to see that day in Chicago was sold out (consequently, this was the first time this had ever happened to me in my life.) I didn't even know it was a zombie film. I had never heard of it as British films normally don't get a great deal of press in the US and A. However, i was on a date and I wasn't just going to leave the cinema.

source

The film starts out with a bunch of social justice warriors breaking into a medical facility in order to release some captive chimps. The researchers plead with the activists to not release them because they are infected with a highly-contagious rage-inducing virus. Being the good little uniformed hippies that they are, the completely ignore the researcher and release the chimps. One of the chimps infects a woman activist and she proceeds to infect the rest of the group. I can't say that I didn't applaud a little bit at that.

source

The screen goes blank and we are introduced to "Jim" who has been in a coma in a hospital for 28 days. He awakes to find the hospital deserted and wanders around a now destroyed London completely unaware of what has unfolded while he was asleep. He eventually comes to a church / cathedral which is an absolutely brilliant scene in this movie about Jim being first introduced to the zombies that now control the city.

source
I can't even imagine how they shot these scenes since there is no chance they could have blocked off all of downtown London for a movie shoot

Jim ends up meeting other survivors and they go on a quest to get out of the city as a team. Aside from certain scenes like when they decided to drive their car OVER other cars rather than find a way around the movie takes a bunch of very unpredictable turns (just a dumb decision that of course result in the destruction of their only vehicle and is frustrating to watch.)

source

The thing I like best about the zombies is that they really aren't zombies in the traditional sense (like a Walking Dead sense) they are still humans just faster because the virus has enraged them all. They still die by conventional means the same way that a human was, they just don't seem to be affected by fatigue the same way that a non-infected person would be if they also were enraged for some reason. In this regard it is a more plausible scenario (in my mind) than re-animated dead wandering around craving eating brains for some reason.

They also can starve to death the same way that non-zombos can, which eventually is the strategy for their elimination.

I don't know if this was Cillian Murphy's first breakthrough film but he certainly did a wonderful job. I really enjoyed him in later roles especially Scarecrow in the Dark Knight Trilogy. This movie was a fantastic box-office success, managing to pull in $85 million from a budget of a mere $8 million. Given the relatively small budget, I think that this film goes to show that you don't need to spend $100 million to make a visually appealing film.

on a scale of "urgh!" to "Wowsers Penny!" I give 28 days later a very heartfelt

"Wowsers Penny!