28 Days Later (4½ Stars)

"28 Days Later" was made in 2002 by the consistently excellent director Danny Boyle. He was brave enough to make a zombie film at a time when zombie films were out of fashion. Referring to my comments in my review of "Ready Player One", that's a risk Steven Spielberg wouldn't have taken. Unexpectedly, it was a massive box office hit, earning back more than 10 times its budget. It's had a big influence on the modern zombie genre. For instance, the TV series "The Walking Dead" borrows strongly from its ideas.

The title takes its name from the speed of the infection. The film begins with animal activists freeing a monkey from a laboratory where it's being used as a test subject. The monkey bites a female activist, who then bites her colleagues. The speed of the infection is devastating. Within 10 seconds of being bitten a person becomes a ravenous monster and bites others. 28 days later more than 99% of the UK's population has been turned into monsters.

The film follows the struggle of the young man Jim to survive, aided only by a few others that he meets on his journey northwards from London to Manchester. At first he naively believes that he can trust all the other survivors, but he finds out that he's wrong. Bad people don't become better when they're put under pressure, they get worse.

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