You can trace a line back to the beginning of the decade to see how sensibilities shifted. 28 Days Later is a good place to start.
The film begins with a harrowing montage of faux-newsreel footage documenting public aggression (a trick lifted a few years later in the Dawn of the Dead remake).
The camera pans from banks of monitors to reveal a chimp forced to watch these loops, strapped to a bench in a research lab. Activists raid the premises, unwittingly releasing a terrible virus.
The film cuts forward (you guessed it) 28 days later. A naked man (Jim, played by Cillian Murphy) wakes to find himself alone in a creepily deserted hospital. He dresses and leaves, stumbling through various London landmarks. These scenes provide some of the movie's most arresting moments.
Deserted London
This is early-morning London, never before captured this way - shot on digital video and punctuated with an eerie, brooding soundtrack, the full horror of an abandoned city becomes evident.
Danny Boyle began shooting 28 Days Later just weeks before the terrible events of 9/11 - which makes one scene, where Jim discovers a boarded-up Piccadilly Circus fountain covered with intimate, personal pleas for news of missing people all the more disturbing: before the movie was released, similar ad-hoc noticeboards filled the parameter of Ground Zero.
Jim's echoed cries for attention go unheard. When he finds a discarded newspaper, he discovers the enormity of the disaster: Britain, perhaps the rest of the world, is gripped by a pandemic. A virus called 'Rage' has turned those affected into frenzied lunatics; the Ebola-like symptoms result in bloody disemboguements that spread the disease with remarkable speed.
The Assault of the Infected
When Jim discovers what appears to be a refuge in a church, he soon witnesses the effects of the virus. What appears to be a congregation of either corpses or sleeping survivors stirs and Jim is forced to run for his life, narrowly escaping certain death thanks to the intervention of two other survivors.
Once in a place of relative safety, Jim has time to consider the wider implications. He speculates the fate of his family, only to be told by Selena (Naomie Harris) that they are most certainly dead. Unable to accept her cynicism, he convinces Selena and Mark (Noah Huntley) to travel on foot to his parents' home the next day.
It's a risky venture - and one that has a terrible cost, serving as a valuable lesson in survival.
When their travels lead them to a tower block, they find two more survivors: Frank (Brendan Gleeson), a taxi driver, plus his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). Frank gives them shelter and later plays a recorded message heard on a radio, indicating a possible safe haven in the north of England. After some debate, they decide to embark on a risky journey in Frank's cab, headed for Manchester.
A Zombie-less Zombie Movie
Although not technically a zombie movie per se (the 'zombies' here are not the living dead, simply 'the infected'), 28 Days Later follows all the genre staples: a post-apocalyptic setting; a relentless, terrifying enemy; a rag-tag bunch of survivors who are likely to end up killing each other before the monsters get to them.
Gone are the shambling cadavers of George A. Romero movies - the infected here are athletic, frenzied spooks, driven by violent rage, capable of outrunning most normal folk, more than willing to tear them apart with their bare hands.
It's a compelling, terrifying idea, replacing the powerful zombie death-metaphor (however slow, the rotting dead would always eventually get you) with a fresher notion - the paranoia of fellow man's seemingly ever-increasing anger and hostility to others.
The film works best in the earliest sequences, especially those moments in the capital city - moments that leave you wondering just how Boyle managed to clear those busy streets.
A Problematic Last Half-Hour
Sadly, the movie supplants a different set of ideas for the final act. Following the radio transmission, the survivors are given shelter by an unconvincing squad of soldiers defends a deserted manor house, led by Major West (Christopher Eccleston). West's motives are initially unclear, but suspicious.
For the most part, gone are the infected, replaced instead by a power struggle - although deftly directed, the frantic action that follows feels very unlikely, reliant on far too many twists of fate. The credibility of the soldiers is pushed to the limit as they are easily dispensed with. Gore-hounds will relish one scene in particular, however.
The denouement will leave audiences split - it's either a satisfying ending or a cop-out, depending on how cynical you're feeling.
It's interesting to note that this 'difficult third act' seems to blight the teamwork of Alex Garland as writer and Boyle as director - seen again in the duo's later Sunshine. Garland is full of great ideas, but has something of a tin ear for dialogue: the earliest scenes feature some woeful exchanges, including a bad 'man walks into a pub' joke, or the clumsy, hammy exposition in the lab at the very beginning.
Performances are varied, ranging from the good (Murphy, Harris) to the bad (a strangely stilted Eccleston,) to the dreadful (apologies Megan Burns).
These are serious issues that would spoil an otherwise good film. It's testament then to Boyle's ingenuity that 28 Days Later is such riveting stuff.
It stands as an early example of the maturation of the genre at the beginning of the century, and as such, is essential viewing.
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