28 Days Later... User Reviews

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28 days later has, over the years, become something of a cause celebre amongst studenty film fans who will often cite it as their favorite "horror" film. Well, quite simply, 28 days later is overrated and as a horror film it liberally plagiarizes George A Romero's Day of the Dead (virtually the whole 3rd act) safe in the knowledge that the mainstream faux film buffs who laud it won't have seen the source material. 
 
Firstly, let's justify the 2 stars I have given it. That scene. The bit at the beginning in a deserted London. It's a great opening. Sadly it is downhill from there. 
 
Basically it is Danny Boyle, a non genre director trying to show the horror greats how it is done and failing spectacularly. For instance the running zombies. Basically, rather than try to ring tension and fear out of the traditional zombie Danny amps them up on Red Bull. Job done. No need to carefully orchestrate tension filled scare scenes. Nope, just get 50 extras to run headlong at some actors as they mug their way through a variety of acting exercises. But worse is to come.... 
 
The whole 3rd act of the film is basically a BBC drama department remake of Day of the Dead. Army and civillians at logger heads. Check. Tame zombie being kept on a leash. Check. Mad Sergeant who would happily feed the aforementioned civvies to a zombie. Check. Rest of the soldiers a bunch of cackling buffoons/psycho's. Check.  
 
To sum up. I hate this film. It is an insult to the Zombie genre and is a self righteous exercise in snobbery and plagiarism. Oh, and the ending is crap as well. Although should you catch a re-run wait till after the end credits as the "original" ending which has been tagged on as an "Easter egg" is way better and justifies the 2nd star.