Rating: 
Summary: Give the English credit
Review: I'm sorry, I can't get into films that use wildly sped up video effects and dimly lit, grainy video to hide a lack of budget or imagination for special effects or stunts. I was expecting to get scared, but I felt my eyes glazing over sometimes, waiting for the real scenery to come back. So it didn't have a big budget, it was like, "Let's get up in the morning before anyone else is awake and shoot a movie about the end of the world!"On the positive side, the plot was O.K., although immediately recognizable as "The Omega Man" with a twist. The characters had distinctly recognizable personality types with depth, which the English seem to be better at developing on film than the Americans. If you've ever been to London or have interest in things English, you will probably enjoy this film, even if it doesn't scare you.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the better movies this summer
Review: I thought this movie was fantastic. Great acting, very well directed, complimentary soundtrack. In my opinion, it is a must see. It makes you think, makes you ask "what if?" but it definately wasn't as scarey as I expected.
Rating: 
Summary: Indie Zombie Movie?
Review: I've read all the other reviews and agree with most points--28 Days Later was a fresh addition to the horror genre, especially due to Boyle's artistic approach. Personally, I've never seen a so-called "zombie" flick that I considered beautiful, which this movie certainly is. However, I also see that the idea of survival in this movie is a tad unmotivated. Characters never really discussed procreation--the army men did not seem as concerned with repopulating the world as they did with "getting their women". On the other hand, I really did like how it turned out, as in most "zombie" movies, that men are ultimately more evil than the enemy. Take the army men for example, who had tied up one of their own men to "study" the Rage disease. It seemed more like torture to me. Plus, Jim ended up doing more harm to the soldiers than the infected did. Displaying how wicked men can be added a very humane twist to the story. Obviously, the warm and fuzzy ending was liked by some and hated by others. I, being a sucker for such endings, liked it and appreciated the hope it instilled. My main point in writing this review was to highlight something that has been grossly neglected--the soundtrack. The songs in this film--led by Brian Eno, Blue States, and Grandaddy--were awesome. John Murphy's original compositions are also not to be overlooked. The music provides a surreal, eerie, and ephermeral quality to the film, making it (as I said before) beautiful. So, see the film--if only to listen to the soundtrack!
Rating:
Summary: The end is extremely nigh!!!!!!!
Review: This is actually a line of graffitti written on the wall of some church as depicted in the film.
"28 days later" is overall a great horror film and quite possibly a classic in its genre even though it treads already stepped on ground it still has enough originality and verve in it to bring it through. As a man wakes up from a coma after a month only to find out that humans have been almost wiped out by a deadly "rage virus" that makes its victims extremely aggressive and murderous a story of ultra doom unfolds filmed masterfully by Doyle (Trainspotting).
The scenes where the protagonist walks about in a deserted London where cars have been abandoned in the middle of the streets and there's no soul to be seen anywhere while screaming "helloooooo" are second to none when it comes to depicting catastrophe on celluloid.
Eventually, and after being attacked by raging zombies, he figures out that while he was comatose the world has turned into an arena of murder induced by the virus. Understanding the extreme danger he's under he teams up with other non-infected survivors and they try to figure out what to do but in the mode of a blind man searching for something which he doesn't know what it looks like.
The ened of the film dissapoints somewhat as the few survivors become prisoners of a near-psychosis-army-major and his few men who've set barracks somewhere in the countryside and gets further spoiled as the final scene emits out of the blue hope when the entire film actually works in showing there's no such possibility. Pity because those last 20 seconds of the closing scene are enough to take the film off its course. An ultra doom-end would not only have been very appropriate but the scenario indeed screams for an ending that leaves no hope and no light at the end of any tunnel. Strangely enough, for those that've read Stephen King's "the stand" a lot of the scenes and ideas incorporated here seem to be lifted straight off that book. They fit like a glove of course but I wonder how much of the script was inspired of that novel.
Cinematically speaking it's strikingly obvious that Boyle pays hommage to classic horror directors like Romero and Carpenter. The raging zombie theme has Romero written all over it and the excellent soundtrack reminds immediately of Carpenter as does the sequence with the survivors being emprisoned in the army barracks while under literal siege which reminisces of "Assault on precinct 13".. Beautiful camera work, beautiful directing, incredible photography, brilliant soundtrack only marred by the ending of the film which should have been avoided. All the -outside Britain- actors are giving excellent performances (esp. the main character as well as the army major) and exactly the fact that they are not known faces helps make the film more believable.
Along with Donnie Darko (dont miss it if you havent seen it)28 days later are easily the top indie films of last year not to metnion of the last 5 years.
Great stuff and a welcome return to classic horror themes for lovers of the genre.
Rating:
Summary: REVENGE
Review: With SARS, Anthrax, Mad Cow Disease, Rampant Terrorism and AIDS on the news nightly, the world of Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" with its flesh-eating Zombies is not at all far fetched.
Arguably, the classic Zombie movie is George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" which today seems quaint and even cartoonish while "28" is so close to today's reality that it frightens and creeps you out because its milieu is so familiar: nature seeking revenge by bringing about a scourge upon the human race that can be traced back many of hundreds of years and manifested in the Plagues brought on by Rats. In fact, there is a disgusting and frightening scene in a tunnel in which thousands of rats fleeing a town preclude the attack of a pack of Zombies that recalls a similar eerie scene in "Nosferatu."
In a film of this kind, the "humans" usually play a backseat to the monsters but Alex Garland (the screenwriter) and Boyle have casted and written very carefully as Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris as Jim and Selena respectively bring a humane truthfulness to their roles without which the film would have no viable heroes and emotional center for which we can root.
"28 Days Later" is frightening because it seems too plausible, too possible, too much of a logical extension of our current world situation. Danny Boyle has fashioned a film that is as much a comment on our lives of cell phones, fouled oceans and endangered species as anything on the 24-hour news channels: watch out, beware, think about what you are doing he's saying... everything has a consequence.
Rating:
Summary: Very scary and different!
Review: Wow...I just saw this movie last weekend, and I've never seen anything like it! It was very different from any horror films I've seen, and left me feeling afraid to walk around any dark corners. I thought the film was very well made, and the actors were definately a breath of fresh air from the typical teenage characters found in today's horror flicks. All in all, a very good, scary horror movie.
Rating:
Summary: Best horror film of the last ten years, arguably.
Review: 28 Days Later... (Danny Boyle, 2002) 28 Days Later... immediately establishes two things: first, that Alex Garland's screenplays are equally as brilliant as his novels (and, as a sidelight, that Danny Boyle letting John Hodge adapt Garland's luscious novel The Beach was an even worse crime than we first thought). Second, that Danny Boyle, given a script with an actual plot, a goal, and enough meat is, in fact, capable of making a good movie. Hot on the heels of these revelations, as I sat through the film for the second time on Sunday afternoon (and this is the first film I have gone to see twice on opening weekend in over a quarter of a century), I realized why the Hollywood machine will never, ever be able to make a film even remotely resembling 28 Days Later.... But more on that, well, later. There has been a good deal of criticism about this movie, and it doesn't surprise me in the least. England has long been the bastion of low-budget horror that achieves a kind of brilliance 28 Days Later... reminded me most in critical reaction of another low-budget horror film from England twenty years ago called XTRO. XTRO is unimaginably brilliant, but like 28 Days Later..., it's not structured like your normal horror film; you get hit with a brick wall at the beginning of the film, and you get hit with a brick wall at the end of the film. The middle contains a few jumps, but is mostly concerned with building plot, characterization, and mystery. (More mainstream filmgoers should be recognizing the pacing by now-the same type of structure was used in both Ringu and Saving Private Ryan.) In other words, it's bound to alienate both the "regular" American horror film fan, who's used to the "scares" coming thick and fast throughout, and the "cerebral" American horror fan, who's used to getting his disturbances from the creep factor and not the gore factor. And to be honest, I'm surprised the film's audiences have been as large as they have (it landed solidly in fourth place this week, behind three films which all were playing at over twice the number of screens). It's almost enough to get me to write Harry Bromley Davenport and tell him that now's the time to re-release XTRO on the big screen. It might have finally found its audience. Aside from the excellent performances (main characters Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris, and Harris wonderful turns by Boyle regular Christopher Eccleston, the excellent and highly underrated Brendan Gleeson, and Megan Burns), much has been made of Boyle's use of digital photography to shoot the film. Good idea, indeed. The whole thing comes up with an odd quality that is both documentary (zombies in flames can almost be smelled in the theater) and surreal (as Murphy and co. are driving by a field of rotting roses, a guy behind me asked, "is that a painting?"). The film is also layered in its presentation, as any good zombie film since the seventies has been; it asks all the questions a zombie film should ask and still manages to make them come off sounding like we haven't heard them before. Boyle has finally found the right film to posit his seeming deep loathing of the human race, which he attempted to bring to the forefront of both Trainspotting and The Beach without a shred of success. Here, it comes through with crystal clarity. What should have emerged from this review is, overall, a single word: different. This is not your mindless summer blockbuster. This is a film that will make you think, require repeated viewings to catch things you missed the first time, stick in your head long after it's over (probably longer than you want it to), and above all will make you uncomfortable. (And not just with horror; the gore factor is far more suggested than explicit. It's little things like Cillian Murphy's first appearance in the movie being a full-frontal nude shot, which had murmurs of discomfort going through the audience. "We didn't need to see that," the guy behind me said. Yeah, we DID. That's the whole point.) And that was what hit me, when not long after my second viewing I found myself listening, somewhat revolted, to songs on the radio by the winners of American Idol. I loathe the show, and could never really figure out why until then. America, when given the choice, will vote for sameness every time. Reuben and Kelly do not sound markedly different than anything else you're likely to hear on your local soft rock station. And most of the films you're likely to see this summer are not markedly different than those you saw last summer. And 28 Days Later... is above all different. You may have seen every film which is paid homage by various scenes here (and you will likely get more out if it if you've at the very least seen A Clockwork Orange, Dawn of the Dead, Platoon, XTRO, most importantly The Omega Man, and probably fifteen to twenty other movies that aren't coming to mind right now), but you've still never seen it done quite like this. All that said, 28 Days Later... is not a great film. It's a very good one, but not a great one. Boyle isn't flaunting the genre's conventions enough to cross the line into true greatness, and there are things about the movie which give away Boyle as a novice horror director (for example, we don't get much information about Rage, but we get too much early to achieve the spooky ambience of Carpenter's The Fog, without getting a full explanation by the end to really drive the horror home, like in Poltergeist). Still, so far it's a shoo-in to make the year's ten best. ****
Rating:
Summary: wow, that was awesome
Review: my brother showed me the preview for this, and i was determined to see it. my gut feeling was right. this movie was AMAZING. the choreography was awesome, and so was everything else. the music fit the scenes perfectly and everything flowed. some of my friends thought it moved to slowly, however, i thought the pace was perfect. this movie is a MUST see and i will be buying this when it comes out special edition DVD!!
Rating:
Summary: Give it a shot-it's not bad
Review: I'm glad to see this kind of movie given a decent budget and put in major theater chains. In a time when I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream and The Sixth Sense are thought of as "horror" films, it's pleasing to see an honest, back-to-basics horror film like this. The only other one this year being House Of 1000 Corpses. This movie has it's shortcomings, but I like the effort. This movie's basically a Frankenstein-type movie in the sense that it's made up of pieces and ideas(sometimes whole scenes!) from other "last people on earth" horror movies. There are pieces of Dead Alive, Night/Dawn/Day Of The Dead, The Stand, The Quiet Earth, Demons, The Crazies and the Resident Evil game to name a few. Yes, we all know that a guy wakes up from a coma to realize that he's left in a city of living dead monsters. He teams up with a few other survivors, ends up at a mansion with some soldiers, tra-la, tra-la. Naturally, these military guys have a sinister agenda, but that's not much of a surprise coz the military ALWAYS does in this kind of film. The "zombies" aren't the Romero ones you're used to, they don't even eat anyone really. They're infected with rage, so they like to beat, claw, stomp, strangle, puke up blood, etc. They actually look and act alot like the demons from Lamberto Bava's Demons films(minus the claws and fangs of course). I have three main gripes with this: 1) The streets aren't cluttered with cars like they should be(with the exception of the tunnel). A massacre like this would leave abandoned cars all over the city, but I guess the zombies moved them or something, coz our heroes have a clear path everywhere they drive. 2). I don't care what anyone says, but a happy ending in this kind of film leaves a real bad taste in my mouth. 3) It's a little more flashy and stylish than this kind of film should be. Is it scary? Depends on how many of the aforementioned films you've seen. The "scares" here consist of zombies suddenly crashing through windows or doors, making the audience mess their trousers and leaving them looking around to see if anyone saw them jump. That's about as scary as it gets if you're fluent in zombie flicks. If you're not, it can go either way. I've heard people say it's very scary and others say it's dumb, so I can't answer that one. It's got a great and scary concept though.
Rating:
Summary: A "human" horror film...
Review: American marketing unfortunately touts this as a horror film...which it is! But it is so much more. This is not your run-of-the-mill Freddy Kreuger or Jason Vorhees slasher. It's a story with heart and emotion, to use an overused cliche. A deadly virus named "Rage" is accidentally released as animal rights activists become infected as a result of their efforts to release monkeys undergoing extremely cruel experimentation. I seem to recall several in the audience laughing when the scientist who tries to stop them explains that they are infected with "rage", and I'm saddened to think those who laughed completely missed one of major themes of the movie which I will delve into later. Fast forward 28 days to Jim who wakes up from a coma in the middle of a deserted hospital. He slowly comes to realize that the entire city of London appears to be deserted. ... One of the elements that the movie brings out is that our world would be better off if we could eradicate "rage" from our society. It also brings up the theme that "rage" cannot be caged as is metaphorically brought up in the opening scene. What is so endearing about this movie at times is the camarderie and happy times occasionally shared by the survivors in their desparate attempt to survive. The love that they eventually share for each other is especially heartbreaking when one or another falls prey to the evil that surrounds them. There are so many aspects of this film and I hope I touch on some of the more memorable ones: 1. First and foremost, the shooting of the film on digital film lending a home-movie feel to everything is bold and it works. The gritty feel to everything brings a considerable edginess to the film.
2. Some of the visual shots, while understated, are exquisite. As one example, the taxi that our survivors head north in pass by flowers that look like a pastel painting.
3. Other shots are subtle. One scene has a survivor hiding behind a mirror...and it's almost as if she is holding up a mirror to RAGE. The "infected" studies the mirror for a considerable time and although some might think he is considering whether or not someone is hiding there, others might infer that it is difficult for one to face oneself and it is only the possible incredulity of such behavior that brought out a brief human response of self-study. .... I recall leaving the theater overhearing someone saying, "That movie [was lame]!" Yes, I can believe someone would say that about a film that shows more intelligence, human emotion, and credibility transcending mere horror.
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