This movie has many parallels to George Romero's Day of the Dead, but this film actually had a budget to work with and overall is a much more satisfying experience. For the un-zombie-educated, Day of the Dead takes place in a world where zombies outnumber the living by 400,000 to 1 and civilization exists no more. Both films also involve the surviving humans taking shelter in a seemingly secure military shelter, where the real threat seems to come from the desperation of the other humans rather than the zombies outside. And in both cases, the shelter eventually (of course) falls to the zombies due to the humans' inability to cooperate. Basically, this movie is what Day of the Dead should have been, and probably could have been, had George Romero been given the budget he needed to shoot his original version of the script.

It's worth noting one major difference between this and Romero's zombie films. The zombies in this movie are not really zombies in the traditional sense. They are referred to as "the infected" and they are much stronger, faster and more threatening than your regular zombies. Whereas normal zombies need a high number to be threatening, and one by itself is virtually no problem, the zombies in 28 Days Later are ferocious, fast-moving, and quite deadly individually. It could also be argued that these creatures are not really dead, but still alive and sick with a very terrible, incurable sickness.

The zombie plague in this movie seems to be a lot easier to catch. Becoming a zombie isn't limited to being bitten by one(although that seems to work too), even a tiny drop of zombie blood in your eye or mouth is enough to cause instant infection. On top of that, the zombies make it a point to vomit blood in your face while they're attacking you. In fact, they seem much more interested in spreading the virus to others than in eating people.

It's certainly splatterific, as every zombie-fest should be. The movie also has several good "jump" scenes with zombie attacks that come out of nowhere. There is some rather disturbing imagery too, and I think it does a good job of balancing tension, gore, and character development, the way good horror movies do. 28 Days Later was directed by Danny Boyle, who also directed Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, which I also recommend. Shot in jolly old England, I'm sure I won't see a better zombie flick this year. I only wish it had panoramic shots of thousands of zombies taking over the world, and scenes of brain- and flesh-eating. It is far better than the original 28 Days, because it has zombies, blood, death, and no Sandra Bullock. Oh yes, it is one of the few sequels that is many times better than the original! I hereby award 28 Days Later the Official BBQ Zombastic Film of the Year Award.