Danny Boyle's latest splendid cinematic offering is all about RAGE, not just about trolley rage,road rage or people's rage on the underground in rush hour, but a full blown RAGE lethal virus that infects the inhabitants of this country.

The virus spreads through the release of a chimp from an animal laboratory in Cambridge. The effects are immediate and fast spreading. The infected is in seconds a blood vomiting, devil-eyed mess of rage.

It is a February month later when the audience sees the catastrophic effect. Boyle's knack of contrast with characters and set conveys this with style. The slow discovery by Jim (Cillian Murphy), Disco Pigs as he wakes up in a deserted hospital that London is empty. Is portrayed through the character and the landscape. Murphy plays the lost soul, waif-like innocent to perfection without effort.

It is a true audience silencer-as in pin drop (you could have heard one) when he wanders through a bleak London, with no traffic or people and the last litter of tourist Big Ben's gracing the streets. Boyle's use of music, such as the eerie hymn Abide With Me, adds to the slow, creeping realisation that as the graffiti says the 'end is really fucking nigh,' There is no-one left in the country bar, a clutch of survivors and a crowd of flesh eating, blood infecting zombies. Bodies are piled high in the streets-it opens your mind to that this could actually be because of the realistic unpretentious way it is presented. That's what gives 28 Days Later its impact. There's the supermarket you shop in,the house that you live in, the street that you walk down except it's not.

The zombies appear when we least expect. Giving the film its gory, crowd pleasers.One moment you are sympathies lie with the fragile Jim and his loss the next you are gripping your seat at the terrible sound of the undead's attack.

But Boyle has insisted that he is not 'selling it as a zombie movie and it's more about contemporary life.' I am inclined to agree with this and the zombie scenes are kept to a minimum, it's more about issues of everyday life.

The film has been shot in digital video giving an edgy quality. It is a film that operates on many levels. It has the raw edge of the horror movie. The gripping intensity of a thriller. Elements of science fiction, dreamlike sequences,stylised violence, down to earth humour and still maintains a cool unruffled streetwise appeal. 28 Days Later also maintains its innocence through the characters attitudes, particularly to sex and it's use of rural idyllic scenes of countryside. There are some beautifully funny moments... trip to Budgens supermarket and Frank's heart-warming offer of crème de menthe in the face of adversity.

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