British director Danny Boyle made his first big splash with Shallow Grave, a twisty thriller of betrayal, and followed it with the big success of Trainspotting. Then he did The Beach, his big Hollywood movie, based on Alex Garland’s novel, a stylish update of The Lord of the Flies for the Ecstasy generation. It flopped. Now Boyle is back with with a smallish movie, a post-apocalyptic fantasy with a script by Garland. 28 Days Later is one of those what-if stories that hearken back to a time when the threat of nuclear disaster hung over the world, and many people naturally wondered what life on Earth would be like if those bombs ever did go off. Of course the threat of nuclear disaster hasn’t gone away — it’s just less a matter of ideologically driven maniacs pressing red buttons and more one of a Chernobyl-type scenario in which a superannuated reactor or two has a nervous breakdown. But 28 Days Later is not a post-nuclear parable; it’s the same idea, except that it speaks to a world in which the idea of mass extinction through an easily transmitted but incurable disease has something of a hold on the imagination. This is the world of Aids, extended and enlarged in metaphor into a rage virus that makes of its victims rabid savages with bulging red eyes and an apparently unquenchable desire to rip any other living creature to shreds. Except they seem focused on those without the virus — why they don’t turn on each other more often is a moot point. But let’s begin at the beginning. 28 Days Later starts with a group of animal-rights activists breaking into a laboratory and freeing some chimps that have been experimented on. All very laudable, but the trouble is that these chimps have been infected with the rage virus. Cut to a man waking up in a hospital bed. This is Jim: he has been comatose for a few weeks, after a road accident. Now he awakes to find himself in a world (a London, to be specific) unutterably changed. Most of the people are gone, and those who remain have been reduced to bestiality by the virus.Luckily for him, there are a couple of people still around who haven’t been infected. They have survived mainly by killing any of the rage-creatures they see; usually the rage-creatures attack them at once, red eyes blaring and teeth frothing, so they don’t have much option. This is another great trope of this kind of movie: an entirely inhuman or dehumanised enemy that can be dealt with only by wholesale slaughter. No point in trying to reason with them. See Mad Max, Starship Troopers, Eight-Legged Freaks, Blade II, Reign of Fire, just to mention a few relatively recent takes on the idea. Boyle is as adept at reinventing this notion and giving it new life, so to speak, as he is at reworking the classic apocalyptic fantasy. It is all pretty thrilling. The rage-creatures are appropriately hideous and scary. You too would keep your machete drawn at all times. But the film is going beyond that and asking Lord of the Flies-type questions (still relevant, or at least still useful to Garland and Boyle) about what this post-catastrophic situation means for those who survive and want humanity to start again. One character, only half in jest, says, “Hot water — the first step toward civilisation.” But, as Cro-Magnons found out some 35 000 years ago, the first step toward civilisation is doing away with anyone less civilised than you and then establishing control over everyone else. Thus civilisation, as Walter Benjamin pointed out, is also a kind of barbarism.Jim (Cillian Murphy) and his fellow survivors (played by Naomie Harris, Megan Burns and Brendan Gleeson) head off into the countryside to find a small colony of uninfected others, so there is a trek in here too, with some terrifying near-escapes, and then the final confrontation. The movie’s edgily composed shots spur the tension as the plot surges forward. (For those who enjoy classical in-jokes, look out for the statue of Laocoon.) The digital camerawork is stylish and fluid, though I, for one, kept thinking it would look better on TV. But perhaps it’s appropriate to the subject matter. Murphy’s face, topped by a raggedly lopsided haircut, is mostly goggle-eyed with terror, which works for we viewers who, perforce, identify with him and see the world through his horrified eyes. Harris is that newly minted paragon of grim determination, inner strength and survival against all odds — the black woman. The world is a marginally safer place since the Cold War truly chilled out, though the Osama bin Ladens and George W Bushes may want to contradict that. In any case, 28 Days Later shows that our visions of apocalypse are still compelling enough to drive a good story. Machetes at the ready, everyone!