28 Days Later: Screenplay [Illustrated] (Paperback)

BANG! This film was a wake-up call. We sat there until 2.30am sobering up very very fast. Empire magazine called it the "best British horror movie for 30 years", it has Alex Garland (author "The Beach"), and Danny Boyle (director of "Trainspotting") behind the scenes. The film was funded by the lottery and was done on a budget of just over £3m, but it doesn't feel like shortcuts were made, but that the message was in the medium - it was very hard hitting. An example of this is that Boyle and his crew did not have official permission to shoot in London, so instead they filmed in the early hours and relied on keeping drivers and passers-by out of shot, which in itself, is a fantastic achievement. The light at dawn and the absence of life generates a sense of immediacy, and a dream-like reality that makes scenes like the "missing persons" boards around the statue of Eros in Piccadilly both eerie and disturbing.

Our hero wakes up to grim and dirty London. Buses are overturned. The tubes have stopped. The shops are deserted and the fruit is rotting. London is dead. London is a graveyard. We learn that animal rights activists have unwittingly released a "rage" virus from a laboratory. Madness has descended on England. Your family and loved ones have either been torn apart by the infected or become the infected. These subhuman creatures are fast, they're angry and they will stop at nothing before they kill you. As Larkin said: "they f*** you up, your mum and dad". That's the chilling blow which really hits home. The infected killer is no longer anonymous, 20 seconds ago it was your dad.

Welcome to a world where hunting packs of the infected run screaming through the night. Even if they get hit and engulfed in flames from a Molotov cocktail they still keep coming until they die. This is a zombie movie for the playstation generation. They run fast, they think fast, and in the scene where one is chained up you can see the dark depths of this illness - they are just like you or I, but they have become bloodthirsty killers at the cost of everything we hold sacred.

The survivors claw their way onwards with tooth and nail, but what is there to live for? The group escape London and decide to drive to Manchester in a black cab towards a radio signal from an Army unit... Now I have to admit, there are few original plot moves with this, and there are no "new" ideas - social paranoia, civic breakdown, viral contamination have all been covered. For me, the redeeming feature that emerged through the blood and fear was this question of survival. This is what sets this story apart, for it also has a delicate touch. The survivors must reconcile their loss, and life must go on.

So there, we have it... at 2.30am on a Saturday morning my mate and I had a long walk from Leicester Square to Liverpool Street in December 2002 through the mists and eerily lit churches and deserted streets. I have to admit, the first time a tramp coughed from a shadowed doorstep, I was ready to run! (For those who choose this interesting experience, the only all-night coffee shop is Ponti's on Bishopsgate). A strange night, a compelling and powerful film - it drove me to read this and, of course, the book is always better!!

I highly recommend that you go see the movie and then read this book. It is a frightening, intelligent apocalypse for modern Britain.