Twenty-eight days after a killer virus was accidentally unleashed from a British research facility, a small group of London survivors are caught in a desperate struggle to protect themselves from the infected. Carried by animals and humans, the virus turns those it infects into homicidal maniacs -- and it's absolutely impossible to contain.
Danny Boyle's purposeful direction and Mark Tildesley's imaginative and resourceful production design keep this fresh and edgy; the images of a wasted London and the details of a paramilitary organization in the countryside are both creepy and persuasive.
– Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader,
6 Oct 2013
rotten:
The picture is twitchy and annoying, flecked with blood and half-digested ideas, and too much is left unexplained.
– Anthony Lane,
New Yorker,
6 Oct 2013
rotten:
Later does a lot of things right, which makes its third-act missteps even more frustrating.
– Nathan Rabin,
AV Club,
6 Oct 2013
fresh:
Heedlessly derivative though it may be, 28 Days Later does what it sets out to do and then some -- scare us out of our wits, then get us to apply those wits to an uncommonly intelligent and provocative zombie flick.
– Joe Morgenstern,
Wall Street Journal,
6 Oct 2013
fresh:
The movie's craft makes the dread of a killer virus contagious: viewers may feel they have come down with a case of secondhand SARS or sympathetic monkeypox.