28 Days Later...

Slate David Edelstein

This is finally the zombie flick as cautionary political tale, and as humanist parable. It's not the flesh-gouging zombie we have to worry about, the filmmakers suggest, but the soul-gouging zombie within.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

A first-rate zombie movie. The best tribute I can offer is that it makes you want to go out directly afterward and down some expensive single-malt scotch.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

At once an old-fashioned freakout and an environmental cautionary tale (mess with Mother Nature and she'll mess with you right back), the film combines two genre standbys -- lethal contagion and the undead -- and gives them a wicked, contemporary spin.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Rarely has so scary a thriller been so well made, and never has digital video -- by the English cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle -- been put to grittier use.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's a zombie flick that moves -- no stumbling, staggering living dead here -- in an atmosphere that feels like a Gothic docudrama, and it's freaky beyond all reason.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The genuine article, a hard-core horror picture from start to finish... Prepare to get seriously stresed.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

But this smart, genuinely creepy movie also feels real, which is why its horrors hit so hard. Fans of the scary stuff, run, don't walk.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's “The Wizard of Oz” with a viral infection.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

In place of elaborate sets, clever filmmaking gives the impression of a central London emptied of people and cars, to eerie effect - and this opening reel is nothing short of magnificent.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland plumb the violence of the mind with slashing wit and shocking gravity. Happy nightmares.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, a veteran of low-tech Dogme films, work wonders with a digital camera, pausing to take in the beauty of the countryside or an eerily empty London…It's virtuosic without ever quite being showy.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A swankily austere piece of jeepers-creepers sci-fi.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Fresh and edgy; the images of a wasted London and the details of a paramilitary organization in the countryside are both creepy and persuasive.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

The deep thematic concerns are never fully developed, but the characters are, and the story compels. Also, the movie's pretty scary.

Time Richard Corliss

Boyle's ingenuity with the camera gives this fraught journey plenty of menace and pizazz.

LA Weekly John Powers

The movie is mercifully uncontaminated by the smarty-pants self-reflexiveness that has sucked the lifeblood from nearly all post-"Scream" horror pictures. Clever enough not to be too clever, Boyle and Garland play their story straight -- they just want to give you the creeps -- and, by so doing, bring the undead back to cinematic life.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mr. Boyle has hardly lost his sly, provocative perversity or his ear for the rhythms of unchecked violence, but he does seem to be maturing. It's as if, in contemplating the annihilation of the human race, he has discovered his inner humanist.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

On one hand a seat-o'-pants digital-video quickie designed for blunt trauma, and on the other a veritable index of classic genre-stuff, Boyle's film creates an acute sense of movie-viewing danger.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

There’s gore, all right, although the real terror lies in the tease, and the often dark, herky-jerky DV format ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable degree.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Around about the third act, the picture does what no self-respecting virus ever would -- relents, turns confused, and lets our immune system fight back with thoughts of its own, with distracting cavils about the logic of the plot and the slightness of the themes.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The look of the film, shot on digital video, is haunting and gritty. The cleaner, prettier look of 35mm would have detracted from the immediacy and sense of foreboding created in this artful blend of sci-fi and pseudo-realism.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A damn-near great end-of-the-world zombie movie, terrifying on the basic heebie-jeebie level, respectful toward its B-movie forebears, and all the more unnerving for coming out in this fretful era of SARS and germ warfare.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Boyle gives us some truly harrowing sequences and a succession of images that stick in the mind like a bad dream.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Solid performances, an intelligent script, and sure-handed direction. The result is a movie that kept me involved from start to finish.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A tough, smart, ingenious movie that leads its characters into situations where everything depends on their (and our) understanding of human nature.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

By the finish, the movie is getting by on little but adrenaline and audience goodwill. Still, that goodwill runs fairly deep, because, taken all in all, 28 Days Later is a superior motion picture.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It's not a pretty picture, but it won't be soon forgotten by thriller fans with nerves and stomachs steely enough to take its violence in stride.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Manages to be impressively unsettling given the flaws in its foundation.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Heir to a long tradition of apocalyptic scare stories, the film wears its influences proudly.

Variety Derek Elley

Shows a rather arrogant disdain for its audience in between occasional flashes of flair.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's undoubtedly a canny and clever twist on the standard zombie-attack yarn, but anybody who's making grand claims for 28 Days Later simply hasn't seen enough horror movies.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

[Boyle] shrugs off any intellectual pretense to rollick in a dead-on scare fest. On that level, 28 Days Later is indeed a frightfully good time.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

I think Garland and Boyle just want to make our flesh creep by showing someone else's flesh decaying. If that's their aim, they achieved it.

Film Threat Rich Cline

Director Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting") has a terrific eye, so the film as a whole is very well directed, with clever camera work that builds the tension and actually jolts us out of our seats a few times.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Like his makeshift societies, Garland's tantalizing set-ups tend to unravel in unsatisfying ways.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Creepy and truly suspenseful in some places, unintentionally comic or plain awful in others.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Boyle's new movie is mostly a zombie fiasco, closer to the vacuities of "The Beach" than the scintillating social satire of "Trainspotting."

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

There are two drawbacks here. One is a shortage of superior zombies, although where one goes to rent extra zombies I have no idea...Second, we have a serious shortage of fright. [30 June 2003, p. 102]

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Unrelentingly grim, unremittingly gross and unforgivably unattractive, 28 Days Later is an orgy of troubling images and bestial sound effects.