Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston

Three animal rights activists break into a research laboratory. Just as they're about to free the cruelly-treated creatures inside, a meek scientist tries to stop them. "The chimps are infected, they're highly contagious." he says. "Infected with what?" question the incredulous activists. "Rage," he replies. Confused and unimpressed the intruders open the first cage. "The animals are contagious! The infection is in their blood and saliva!" the scientist implores. It's too late. The cage is open and a chimp launches itself on one activist, bringing her to the ground and biting her. She immediately begins to vomit blood on the floor and on her compatriots; when she stands she is a violent, insensate creature. She attacks the scientist. The chimps that are still caged look on as she finishes him off. Fade out.

28 days later a man wakes up out of coma. The hospital he is in is deserted. The street outside is deserted. London is deserted. The man wanders into the balcony of a church. Down below him is an enormous mound of human bodies, carelessly stacked in the center of the church. "Hello?" says the man. Five of the bodies lurch up and come after him.

That's the first ten-plus minutes of director Danny Boyle's cracking good 28 Days Later. Ever since seeing the film at Sundance in January I've had the pleasure of recounting that opening sequence to people. It's as if I'm reliving the days of campfires and spooky stories. People shudder when they hear it.

It's been said that Boyle--who approaches this with a serrated cinematic style, entirely unlike Trainspotting or Shallow Grave--would rather this film be thought of as a virus movie rather than a zombie movie. Perhaps Boyle's reluctance is in the notion that a zombie movie can't aspire to much more than mere horror. If so, he then hasn't seen the stacks of graduate papers done on racism and Night of the Living Dead, which could be shoved against the door jam of the Cinema Studies department in case an army of the undead happened to attack. Perhaps he wanted to accentuate the currency of the virus topic, rather than raise the hoary, nostalgic head of the flesh-eating mindless minion. If that's true then my apologies Mr. Boyle, but 28 Days Later is a zombie movie; a great, hyperactive, relentless, vicious, sheet-splattered zombie movie.

The young man who awakens from the coma to Mr. Boyle's nightmare world is Jim (Cillian Murphy--boy can Boyle find interesting faces) and he soon realizes that most of the still-mobile inhabitants of London have been zombie-fied. He's rescued from a group of them, just in the nick of time, by Selena (Naomi Harris), and together they find a father (Brendon Gleeson) and daughter (Megan Burns) who've also survived the plague. They all set out in search of the source of a radio beacon that gives coordinates for a place that has managed to fend off the virus.

What that place is, its make-up and its structure, is the weakest part of 28 Days Later. The third act is a crescendo of violence that is so predestined and predictable that it nearly lurches forward, zombie-like, itself. "Must make point!" says the third act as it paws at our clothes.

28 doesn't need to make that particular point (that point being: who are the savages anyway?). The film has already broached more than one hot topic and, by then, has already shocked us and jangled our nerves. Since so few films these days, particularly horror films, are able to do that, one wishes the film would have found another way to resolve itself. But you'll stand in the lobby afterward feeling slightly ravaged, in a good way.