The zombies are caused when some well-intentioned, but foolish (and possibly dirty) animal activists release some monkeys from a Cambridge research facility who have been infected with “rage.” Ignoring the warnings, the monkeys go ape, and before you can say “Uh oh” the humans are vomiting blood and tearing each other to pieces. We cut to black and a small title appears in the bottom right corner: “28 Days Later...” Here, we meet Jim (Cillian Murphy) totally naked in a bed in an abandoned London hospital. He stumbles into consciousness and then wanders the streets of the deserted city. Though we know Boyle employed traffic cops and attractive women to get these incredible shots, their power is not diminished: these minutes have a edgier end-of-the-world vibe than anything Terminator 3 could cook up with $170 million in special effects.

Boyle, who made the supremely cool Trainspotting before spending the last several years on critical and commercial flops, shot 28 Days Later in grainy, ugly digital video, and his zombie attack scenes cut and move with jittery jabs and slashes as if the camera itself was infected with Rage. The digital video was picked as much for its ease and speed as its look, but the natural, washed out colors only enhance the audience’s unease. The zombies are fast and remorseless, and once they infect you (by biting you or getting their blood into your own), there’s only a few seconds before you become a zombie yourself. There’s no cure, and no hope. Boyle kills off characters with a brutality that rivals his virus-laden creations.

Jim hooks up with the apocalyptically sexy Selena (Naomie Harris), and father-daughter survivors Frank and Hannah (Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns). As survival in London gets tougher and tougher, they hear a single radio broadcast, offering salvation from the infection at a location outside of Manchester. Eventually, the group finds these survivors, an assortment of soldiers led by Major West (Christopher Eccleston), who do offer some solutions for our heroes, along with additional problems. Boyle manages to make us care about these people, then rips our hearts out when the meet their fates, and the script by Alex Garland is both potent and efficient. While the final act at the army base is less terrifying than the city scenes, the philosophizing on survivalism, particularly within the male psyche, is welcome, and the almost Evil Dead-ish evolution of Murphy’s Jim emphatically solidifies 28 Days Later’s rep as a cool film.