28 Days Later takes some of the best elements of Romero's Dead trilogy and spins them in somewhat new directions.

Harry at AICN made the distinction that this is an outbreak film about a virus, not, as the trailers were saying, a reimagination of zombie horror. He's right to an extent, but this is a zombie movie at its core.

The zombies in this film, infected by a bloodborne rage virus, are quick and of resonable intelligence; more in keeping with the undead from Return of the Living Dead than Romero's films. They rush at their targets, screaming and frothing at the mouth. They also vomit up quite a bit of blood.

If Romero is planning on making the fourth Dead film, tentatively titled Dead Reckoning, he should pay carefull attention to what works in this film, because it is simply the elements that worked in Night and Dawn. Simple situational horror.

Director Boyle and Writer Garland pay homage to Dawn with a brief foray into a supermarket, and they do Romero one better with their use of soliders than he did in Day of the Dead. They even pay homage to the captured zombie from Day with a solidier chained in a courtyard.

This is a quite movie and felt like a seventies horror film to me. I don't know if the graineness of the filmstock was entirely purposefull, but I think it added to the roughness of the film. This is not a polished looking movie, it is ugly and brutal.