28 Days Later…

The streets of London are terrorised by blood-crazed maniacs - nothing new there then. Except that those same streets seem so preternaturally quiet. Twenty-eight days have passed since the Rage virus was unleashed; four weeks which have decimated the population. When Jim (Murphy) awakes from a coma it's as if he's still in the throes of some frightening fever dream: Robinson Crusoe in Piccadilly Circus. Survivors Selena (Harris) and Mark (Huntley) bring him up to speed. They haven't seen another living human being for days, they say. The unliving come out at night. An apocalyptic psychological horror film, shot on DV and peopled with newcomers, this marks a sharp volte face for the globe-trippers behind The Beach. Barely conceiving of a world beyond Britain, this is a very insular movie, but none the worse for that. Profoundly indebted to George Romero's zombie trilogy, but brusque and brutal in comparison, it clicks on urban alienation, social paranoia, viral and bacterial terror, pollution and contamination, but homes in on the idea that the greatest threat may be fear itself. Danny Boyle has got his edge back.