28 Days Later

Despite being warned that a group of monkeys about to be released from a lab by some anti-vivisectionists are laced with disease, they let one of them out anyway and next thing it's a month later and "Jim" (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in hospital all by himself. There's not a soul to be seen, anywhere. He can't spend the entire film wandering about naked, so finds some scrubs and goes exploring - gradually gleaning information about the plague that led to the evacuation of the cities and to his current isolation. It's not as if he had anything to do with the release of this virus, but he now has to deal with it's consequences. Luckily he encounters "Selena" (Naomie Harris) and "Mark" (Noah Huntley) who save him from a marauding mob (think "Omega Man" from 1971) and their risky adventures begin trying to find what's left of humanity and hopefully safety. A wind-up radio broadcast gives them some hope, and off they travel with newfound friends "Frank" (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter "Hannah" (Megan Burns) in their black taxi (so of course, it takes a circuitous route) to Manchester. Their arrival visits tragedy on the small group but also introduces them to the last bastions of military security - under the command of "Maj. West" (Christopher Eccleston). Pretty swiftly they realise that very little of this new scenario is much safer for them and their thoughts turn to leaving...! This is quite an effective apocalyptic tale of corrupted science and morals and uses, for most of the first section of the film, dialogue sparingly allowing the eerie photography and soundtrack of a largely abandoned London to set the scene for us. Thereafter the writing isn't the best, but the benign sense of menace exuded by Eccleston and the confidence of both Harris and the young Burns work well at giving us an almost claustrophobic sense of peril, especially as we drift to a denouement that is cleverly constructed to make us think. It's bleak and threatening at times, not without the odd dark humour and in the end presents us with quite an intriguing look at humanity in many of it's less attractive, more visceral, guises. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland keep a few twists for the tale at the end, too, and Murphy holds it all together in an understatedly potent fashion.