For the first 80 minutes or so, 28 Days Later is masterful horror. A sense of isolation has never been captured so well on film as a character the audience only knows as Jim (Cillian Murphy) walks through a deserted London cityscape. Sadly, this atmospheric pacing and eerie silence is thrown away for the finale, and the film as a whole falls apart completely.
The imagery captured by director Danny Boyle is truly special. The viewer really gets a sense the world as we know it is taking its final breaths. Jim’s quest to find other living people leads him to discover that after being left in the hospital during an accident, the planet has been overrun with a virus known as Rage.
It’s been stated many time that 28 Days Later is not a zombie film. For the most part, this is true. The few scares are paced sparingly, and the attacks are brief. It’s a sickness, not the living dead. That said, considering where the film ends up, it’s unquestionably a zombie movie.
As the survivors come upon a military hideout, loads of zombie movie clichés destroy the tension created by the earlier scenes of desolation. They’re trapped inside a building, they’re surrounded, the enemy lacks any real intelligence, and the victims of the illness have a taste for those not infected. That’s a zombie movie.
The script, written by Alex Garland, tries to add in some additional human drama to keep it fresh, but this fails as well. It’s a minor attempt to make a statement on humanity and a very plausible situation should an epidemic such as this occur. In terms of entertainment value and horror, it’s a dead stopping point.
However, 28 Days Later is still a success story. No other apocalyptic film has presented the scenario in this manner, or this effectively. It’s disappointing that it dissolves into a generic mess, yet this is a solid piece of horror taken as a whole. 
Shot digitally and transferred to film, the quality of this transfer depends entirely on your viewpoint. With horrid edge enhancement, faded color, print damage, weak black levels, and a low resolution that makes this barely above the level of a VHS tape, 28 Days Later looks exactly like the director wanted it to. This disc captures that nicely. For a home theater presentation, this is as low quality as you’ll find from a major release. Whether or not that’s appealing is up to you. 
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