By Cheryl Eddy

A PATIENT AWAKES from a coma only to find the hospital, the streets, the surrounding buildings, and possibly – probably – the entire world, completely, nightmarishly deserted. That's the way last year's Resident Evil ends, and an identical scene occurs early in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. In both films, the culprit behind all of the chaos is a rampaging population of zombies, triumphantly in power after apparently converting all noncomatose humans to their rotting, putrid ranks. But the similarities basically end there: Boyle's version hews rather closely to George Romero's holy Night of the Living Dead trilogy; Resident Evil, which was derived from a video game, included some decently gory action, but is remembered chiefly for Milla Jovovich's crotch shot, and little else.

Come to think of it, 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy – a pale, hollow-cheeked actor in the vein of Ewan McGregor, circa Boyle's Trainspotting – also bares all, but the brief nudity doesn't play like exploitation here. Maybe it's the use of digital video, or the trembling pop soundtrack, or the British slang, but 28 Days Later is pretty arty for a genre film. Still, horror is the main event, and like all truly scary movies, this one neatly plays off current events to increase the oh-shit-this-might-really-happen vibe. SARS may give you a hell of a cough and be bad for the tourist trade, but it's peanuts compared to what's simply described as "rage," a highly contagious blood virus accidentally unleashed on London by a group of well-intentioned animal rights activists. Symptoms, which manifest in 20 seconds or less, include red eyes, projectile vomiting, and the uncontrollable urge to viciously attack everyone around you. Needless to say, things go to shit pretty quickly.

When Murphy's Jim, a bike messenger recovering from a traffic accident, opens his eyes 28 days after the virus begins to spread, London is no longer a city, but an open-air crypt. In a nod to Day of the Dead, paper money mingles with the rest of the trash in the streets; a forgotten newspaper carries the breathless headline "Evacuation!" Jim's puzzled exploration leads him into a ravaged church (graffiti: "Repent – the end is extremely fucking nigh") filled with bodies; most are dead, but a few sputtering "infected" emerge and give chase. Fortunately for Jim, he's discovered by Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), who've made it this far with an assortment of non-firearm weapons (unlike Romero's back-from-the-dead zombies, 28 Days Later's breed are technically still living and therefore can be killed by good old-fashioned beatings). Selena, especially, has become a hard-hearted survivalist, warning Jim that she won't hesitate to hack him to bits if he's contaminated. "Plans are pointless," she sighs after Mark is attacked and the group is winnowed down to two. "Staying alive is as good as it gets."

Selena's cynicism dissolves a wee bit when the pair encounter Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teenage daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), who possess a hand-crank radio delivering a broadcast from a group of salvation-promising soldiers stationed to the north. The foursome pile into Frank's cab and hit the road (pausing for a harrowing tire change and a couple of Dawn of the Dead homages, including a supermarket shopping spree). An idyllic, peaceful camp-out en route, complete with horses running free and the consumption of much chocolate and Valium, can't mask 28 Days Later's pervading sense of dread and doom – and with good reason.

It's been reported that screenwriter Alex Garland acknowledges his debt to Romero, and there's no arguing the film's final third heavily borrows from, most obviously, Day of the Dead. The film's climactic action scenes are helped along by the fact that 28 Days Later's zombies resemble less Romero's shambling, flesh-munching slugs than, say, the irradiated menace seen in Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City (a.k.a. City of the Walking Dead), in that they can run really, really fast (the Nightmare zombies can also drive cars and fire machine guns, but that'd maybe be asking too much here).