Night Of The Living Dead for the MTV generation? just about. Not quite as classic though. The story, in case you don't already know it, is that a group of eco-terrorists break into a medical research lab to release captive monkeys (i think they're monkeys). They unwittingly release one that's infected with a highly contagious, and deadly, virus. A virus that turns those infected into zombie-like people hungry for human flesh. Cue a bloke waking up in the middle of a deserted hospital ward slap-bang in Greater London. In fact, the whole place appears to be deserted. He wanders around aimlessly for a bit, finally getting chased by some infected. He gets rescued though, by a couple of other survivors. They helpfully fill in what happened whilst he was out cold. One of them dies pretty soon and then they meet up with two more survivors; a girl and her father. They decide to drive a black cab down to Macnhester, to an army barricade which is broadcasting a recording claiming the answer to infection is there. Of course, things aren't quite what they seem. It soon becomes apparent that all of the soldiers at the barricade are a hair's breadth away from insanity, and all they really want is the two females...

There's plenty of action, and a few tense moments, but on the whole it's a quite predictable film. Sure, the zombies are fast, but there's somehow never quite as big a feeling of being trapped, or hopelessness, as in the ...Dead series of films. Probably at least in part because the ifnected are still, when you get down to it, living things, and so such accuracy as with traditional undead zombies is not required in order to destroy them. There's also some glaringly obvious inconsistencies (here's two to start you off); firstly, the blood of the infected is meant to be highly contagious, what with being full of the virus. We see that mere contact with a pretty small amount is supposed to be enough to infect you, and yet the guy who turns hero near the end gets plenty of infected blood on him, but somehow is unaffected by it. Also, at one point, we see the army commander go up to his jeep to check on another army guy. The view changes to his view as he opens the jeep door, and we see the other army guy is dead. But! his head moves, noticeably, before the shot cuts to a different view.

One thing's for sure, the idea behind the story is hardly that original. Anyone who thinks so must be oblivious to the zombie movie genre, which holds a large number of titles. Titles that cover the causes of zombies from being radiation from venus (the original Night Of The Living dead) to various special chemicals (The Living dead At The Macnhester Morgue and the Return Of The Living Dead series) to a virus (Day Of The Dead hints strongly at this being the cause of those zombies)

If you want a zombie movie that has noticeable originality, give Undead a try. It does do something different, although you won't see this until it's near the end.

In the end, 28 Days Later is enjoyable, but hardly scary or even original. And there is better out there, I'm afraid. 3/5