Classic Movie Review: '28 Days Later' is an All-Time Zombie Classic

28 Days Later

Directed by Danny Boyle

Written by Alex Garland

Starring Cillian Murphy, Alex Palmer, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson

Release Date June 27th, 2003

Published April 17th, 2025

On June 20th, 2025, 28 years Later is coming to theaters. In honor of that film's release, I decided to look back on the Danny Boyle original from 2003. 28 Days Later is among the greatest horror movies ever made and, arguably the best zombie movie ever. Controversial, I know. I mean no disrespect to the legendary George Romero but, Danny Boyle's rage zombies are a bit scarier than his lumbering hordes. You are welcome to disagree, and you're not wrong, it's a subjective take. But, maybe this review can make the casse.

In a scenario that must have had hippie-hating Republicans smiling, a group of animal activists break into a research facility and release a group of monkeys who they believe are being abused. Unfortunately, the monkeys happen to be infected with a disease the doctors call the rage virus. The infection is passed by blood and when a monkey bites a human, it takes little more than 30 seconds before that person becomes a mindless flesh-eating zombie. The zombies can be killed like any normal human being but they are also excessively quick and strong.

Within 28 days of the break in at the research facility, the virus has spread throughout the whole of Britain. Only a few lucky people remain uninfected. One of the uninfected is Jim (Cillian Murphy) who has just awakened from a coma to find the hospital entirely empty. He then finds the neighborhood around the hospital empty, and then finally all of London. That is until he stumbles into a church filled with zombies. The site of Jim in an empty London street is an iconic horror image.

Jim escapes his first zombie encounter with the aid of a pair of survivors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris). They give Jim the 411 on what has happened since his coma and then accompany Jim to his parents' home where he finds his parents dead. It's not long before the zombies arrive there and Mark is bitten and then killed by Selena. As she explains to Jim, if someone is infected you have only seconds to kill them before they turn. She won't hesitate to kill Jim if the same happens to him.

The two then venture out to find new shelter and stumble upon a father and daughter (Brenden Gleeson and Megan Burns) who are hiding out in what remains of their apartment building. Though they have had little to no interaction with the outside world, they have heard what they believe is a recorded message on the radio about some military officers who may have a cure for the virus. Whether that is true or not, the soldiers at least offer protection from the zombies and that is good enough to get them on the road. Unfortunately, once they arrive at the military base, they find a ramshackle crew who is no more well prepared than they are.

It's best to stop there because to give away too much would ruin what is a terrifying, awesome, and brilliant story. The concept is a frightening one. Think about it, a virus that could wipe out a large group of people in a short amount of time; that is a concern right out of our most recent memories. In 2003, in the time of public conversations about Anthrax and Monkeypox, the story put forth in 28 Days Later felt immediate and frightening. Not surprisingly, 28 Days Later holds up remarkably well years after our streets were emptied by COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders.

The true terror of 28 Days Later however comes in Danny Boyle's direction and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle's camerawork that has a mind’s eye feeling to it. 28 Days Later is unsettling in the way Mantle’s camera becomes like a dream from your own mind. I can vividly recall walking out of 28 Days Later feeling as if I had just woken from a remarkably visceral and vivid nightmare. The look of 28 Days Later is distinct from any prior zombie movie. It's dream-like but one of those dreams where it takes a moment for you to realize that it was just a dream.

28 Days Later is the rare horror film that treats its horror with a desperate seriousness. There is very little of the camp that marks most horror films of a similar vintage. There is wit to it, a welcome black humor amidst a sea of jarring horror imagery, but the film is rarely, if ever, ironic or detached in the style of so many early 2000s horror movies. Director Danny Boyle never allows the film to rollover into parody, even in the obvious homage to Lord Of the Flies that emerges in the climax of the film, inside the military base.

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