Love him or hate him, you can't deny that director Danny Boyle has a distinctive and visionary style. Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, The Beach and It's An Ordinary Life are all high quality, stylish and unique films and 28 Days Later is a return to top form and arguably his best film yet.

The film begins with a very frightening scene, where we see a chimpanzee hooked up to a lone bed, with six screens above it, all playing endless scenes of domestic violence and warfare. Animal rights activists have broken into the facility to set the animals free and despite dire warnings of the risk of infection from the technician they capture, they still let one of the primates out. It charges at one of the activists and bites and claws at her. Within seconds her eyes have turned red and she projectile vomits blood at her companion, who also begins to change, whilst the woman attacks and mauls the helpless technician. We then skip ahead in time, 28 days ahead in fact, to another lone bed, this time in what looks like an emergency room in a hospital. The man in the bed, Jim, awakens from a coma to discover that the whole hospital is empty and as he leaves and walks around London, he cannot find any sign of a living soul. The place is utterly desolate and deserted.

These opening scenes are some of the most powerful and disturbing I've seen for a long time, as Jim walks past a toppled double decker bus and we see him wandering over an empty Westminster Bridge, with the silent Houses of Parliament in the background. There are many other scenes like this as we go, with scenes of dead bodies piled up, litter blowing around everywhere, cars left abandoned in the road. One scene sees an entire section of the M1 completely deserted, as Jim and his companions drive along on the wrong side.

As you would expect, the direction is absolutely fantastic and the entire thing is shot in digital video, rather than the usual medium of film. This gives it an edgy, gritty and more realistic look than the usual Hollywood gloss and this really serves to hammer home the bleak possibility that something like this could really happen. Jim soon finds signs of life, but they are awkward, bloodstained shams of the human form, lurching forward at alarming speed, growling and swiping as they come. He makes a run for it and manages to find two other human survivors. I don't want to tell too much of the story, but Jim's journey into this hellish remnants of British civilisation is just beginning and his travels will take him to the dark, primal depths of the human psyche before the story is over. In fact, almost more frightening than the Infected, as the zombie-like creatures are referred to, is the lengths the remaining humans seem willing to go to in order to survive, ironically losing all trace of humanity in the process.

The screenplay is one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of watching and the acting is outstanding from everyone involved. Cillian Murphy is simply fantastic as Jim and although this is his story, the other people he meets are equally as compelling and likeable characters, in particular the seemingly cold Selena, (played brilliantly by Naomie Harris). Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns play Frank and his teenage daughter Hannah, also main characters in the film and Christopher Eccleston puts in a great performance and is well supported by a classy selection of young actors, whose role in the story I don't want to reveal.

The Infected themselves are one of the most frightening screen creations ever seen. They are often bloody and wounded, but always with staring red eyes and expressions of pure, directionless rage on their faces. They don't shamble slowly like traditional zombies but run extremely fast, shaking, twitching and fitting as they go, snarling inhumanly as they advance. And they're even more dangerous than regular zombies as they don't just want to eat; they want to kill for killing's sake. What's worse is that once infected, the transformation is virtually instantaneous, so if you don't die from the initial attack then you're doomed to become one of them. The make-up is brilliant, generally understated so that the creatures still look alarmingly human (there's no decay, as their bodies are still alive) with some seriously nasty moments of vomiting blood at high velocity.

Coming back to the direction for a moment, every section of the story has its own feel to it. The long shots of Jim simply walking around a totally deserted London are haunting and powerful, scenes where the Infected are attacking are jumpy and fast-moving, with some jerky camera work to add to the panic, then scenes such as the shopping spree and the picnic are much more relaxed and normal, showing that no matter the crisis, life does go on and that the human will to endure is great enough to overcome anything. There are many moral messages to this film, but not in the usual Hollywood way; these issues are both raised and dealt with by the film, leaving you thinking about different aspects of it long after the credits have rolled. The music is excellent too, completing the required atmosphere of every scene.

There's a very decent and interesting collection of extras here, including several alternative endings. There is a commentary from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland and a big gallery of still photos taken on location, with a commentary from Danny Boyle for these as well. The eight deleted or alternative scenes have commentary from Danny and Alex too and some of them were so good or surprising (taking the film in an alternative direction) that I re-watched them with the commentary to find out why they were not used. There are trailers and an interesting behind the scenes featurette and even the menus are creepy! As I mentioned, there are no less than three alternative endings, two of which can be watched and one that is only in storyboard form, which is narrated by Danny and Alex again - the amount of time they put into these extras is truly commendable. To round all of this off is an excellent Jacknife Lee music video, where you can watch the most pivotal moments of the entire film condensed into a few minutes with an awesome music track to accompany it. This really is a classy collection of extras.

28 Days Later is nothing less than a cinematic triumph and it is one of the most realistic, chilling, frightening and tense horror films to come out in a long, long while. If you're sick of the Hollywood teen horrors of recent years and want something more in the vain of the excellent and gritty Dog Soldiers (but with much more convincing antagonists) then this is for you. And unless you're of a nervous nature, there's no excuse not to get hold of this and watch it as soon as you can.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).