After animal rights terrorists invade a science lab, they begin breaking monkey's free from their cages despite the frantic warnings from a scientist and are violently attacked by the apes that tear them apart and infect them. 28 days later, a man (Cillian Murphy  Quando, One the Edge) awakes from a coma in a hospital bed to discover a desolate and trashed hospital before him. He begins to inspect the marvel before him as the entire city of Britain is empty with no one in sight. He stumbles upon an empty church in which he is attacked by a priest who violently charges him and as he flees many others begin chasing him. He runs into survivor's who save him and tell him a virus has broken free on the general population and mankind as he knows it ceases to exist.

The results of the virus are the infected. People who growl with beaming red eyes that run at almost lightning speeds and kill anything in their path and infect others by tearing them apart or vomiting blood on them. It only takes twenty seconds to become one, so they waste no time disposing of their friends. They stumble upon father and daughter survivors who decide to travel a military base where they supposedly have everything under control, but what they will find is not what they will expect.

Occasionally within the throws of watered down horror movies and thrillers, a movie and a director comes along and decides to completely re-write the way horror is done. Danny Boyle (director of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, and The Beach) is one of those people who will undoubtedly change horror movies. This is possibly the most shocking and terrifying movies I've seen in years. Danny Boyle is genius because after directing freaky cult films like Trainspotting, it was a bit questionable to me if he could handle horror but he pulls it off well. The movie constantly changes into pastels of moods within it's canvas setting constantly going from light moods, ala the shopping scene, instantly cranking up the tension, ala the tunnel sequence. He can leave us smiling with delight and in a split second leave us biting our nails and cringing in our seats. He relies a lot on isolation to scare us, showing massively long scenes of lonely landscapes forcing us to feel even more terror and insecurity. He goes for a long time without giving us any type of horror as we watch the characters interact with one another and cooperate within this post-apocalyptic world without anyone. Then, suddenly, he throws a lot of horror and gore at us relentlessly which makes it scarier because the violence is so rare that when it comes it's more terrifying. He dares to break the mold of the horror genre by masterfully giving us a range of moods and colors, and terrifying sequences non-stop. A lot of this movie reminded me of a Dario Argento film with the shocking opener that lets you know what's in store for you.

The movie actually gives us characters we can care about and the director helps us by exploring the psychological effects this horror is having on them. We see Jim, the coma patient, have dreams that he is alone and deserted; we can see the desperation within the father's eyes, and the torment in the daughter's. These are actually characters that we feel bad for and within a split second Boyle takes them away from us. Characters in this movie come and go and Boyle snatches them without hesitation. Boyle often drops the characters off in small cramped dark places making the audience even more nervous and more anxious as we know terror is looming but we can do nothing about it. The infected are horrifying as they stare with beaming red eyes and bloody faces and growl aloud; they can run and jump and dash and never stop. They also can infect someone by scratching them or vomiting oozing red blood all over the person which infects their victim within a matter of seconds, twenty seconds. Zombie movies have long drawn out sequences where we know someone is infected by the zombie and it takes them forever to change, but this wastes no time and instantly amps up the tension factor. We witness the transformation before our eyes and watch as they spasm and hiss and turn instantly.

The movie is more of a commentary on humanity and how we never really learn from our mistakes. We watch four people forced to live and exist in a world without order, a world with carnage, a world not very different from ours. When the people save Jim and explain that the government is basically non-existent he replies "What do you mean there's no government? There's always a government!" This forces them act upon themselves and begs the questions: In a world without order, how do you achieve it? Who decides what life should be like, and is it all ultimately futile? This shows what humans do when there's no structure or basis for order and basically take it upon themselves to do it with unsuccessful results. The last twenty minutes of the movie is very gory and very intense as the entire movie comes to a close with bloody results, results that will leave you cringing and covering your eyes. I was often covering my eyes and groaning in fear as the last moments of the movie pretty much sum up the entire story in a very horrifying fashion. Danny Boyle got it right and proves he's an elite director that has yet to achieve the fame he so rightly deserves.

The movie at times tries to almost preach social commentary so much so that it becomes incredibly evident like they seem to be shoving it down our throats. Though, the movie does inflict the commentary rather well, towards the end it just becomes preachy and tried.

Danny Boyle is a genius director and might as well have re-invented the horror genre. One of the scariest movies I've ever seen, this is entertaining, horrifying and is sure to be a classic. Bravo Mr. Boyle, bravo.

• DVD review: Director Boyle does not skimp out on the audience and fans. The DVD contains a great opening menu, nice crisp and clear picture for the movie. I prefer the widescreen.
  EXTRAS: There are some great extras for the audience to feed on including a documentary about the making of the film, great quirky audio commentary for the film by Boyle and three alternate endings: The theatrical alternate ending (without Jim), the alternative ending (excellent and grim), and the radical ending which is far-fetched but very interesting. There are also a load of great deleted scenes including one where there are groups of infected in a basement. Unbelievable.
• The exteriors of the streets of London were shot in the early hours of the morning on weekdays. The crew only had a couple of minutes each day, and crew members had to politely ask clubbers not to walk onto the streets.
• The hospital in the film is a real day hospital and is not open at weekends. The trust managers of the hospital hire out the hospital for weekends so the filmmakers paid them directly which benefited the finances of this public hospital.
• The tower block where Hannah and her father lived was condemned and has now been demolished.
• The tunnel scene was filmed in a new tunnel extension which the filmmakers had special permission to use.
• Police allowed a stretch of the M1 motorway to be closed for a few minutes at a time for the scene where you see a long desolate stretch of road.
• Christopher Ecclestone and the other soldiers in the film had a 3 day training programme with real soldiers to help them learn how to carry themselves believably.
• The filmmakers had the co-operation of councils and help from the police to clear streets (and a motorway), but only for short periods which would have been useless if not for the flexibility and speed provided by digital video cameras which were used to shoot the entire film.
• The only words spoken by an infected person in the movie are, "I hate you," said by the boy in the cheeseburger stand right before Jim kills him.
• The angelic song that plays in the background particularly during the car trip is called "In Paradisum" by Gabriel Fauré.
• Horror novelist 'Stephen King' bought out an entire showing of the film in New York City.
• Scriptwriter Alex Garland acknowledges several sources as inspiration for his screenplay, notably John Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids", Romero's "Dead" trilogy (Night, Dawn and Day) and "The Omega Man". Direct homages include Jim waking up in the hospital from The Day of the Triffids and the chained 'infected' being studied from Day of the Dead and the scene in the grocery store, people in the mall from dawn of the dead.
• Alex Garland and Danny Boyle did a great deal of research into social unrest, drawing ideas from things that had happened in Rwanda and Sierra Leone (such as the piling of bodies inside churches), but drew the line at using any actual footage from such incidents in the opening montage. All footage featuring dead bodies/desecration of bodies was faked.
• Leonardo DiCaprio was offered the role of Jim.
• Tilda Swinton was offered the role of Selena, but passed.
• Robert Carlyle was offered the role of Major Henry West.
• A backstory was developed by director Danny Boyle and actress Naomi Harris to explain her character's hard-natured, ruthlessly pragmatic outlook on life - apparently, the character had been forced to kill her entire family in one afternoon, starting with her Infected mother and father to save her baby brother, only to discover that her brother was also Infected.
• The symbol used for this film is an international symbol for blood-borne biohazard.
• Ewan McGregor was the original choice to play Jim.
• The fighter jet pilot speaks Finnish. He says "Lähettäkää helikopteri" (send the helicopter).
• This is Brendan Gleeson's second role in films about deadly virus - the other was 'Mission Impossible II'.