In '28 Years Later,' a zombie pandemic rages on

Most movies are lucky to predict one thing. Danny Boyle's 2002 dystopian thriller "28 Days Later" managed to be on the cutting edge of two trends, albeit rather disparate ones: global pandemic and fleet-footed zombies.

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Add in Cillian Murphy, who had his breakout role in that film, and “28 Days Later” was unusually prognostic. While many of us were following the beginnings of the Afghanistan War and “American Idol,” Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were probing the the fragile fabric of society, and the potentially very quick way, indeed, horror might come our way.

Boyle always maintained that his undead — a far speedier variety of the slow-stepping monsters of George A. Romero's “The Night of Living Dad” — weren't zombies, at all, but were simply the infected. In that film, and its 2007 sequel “28 Weeks Later” (which Juan Carlos Fresnadillo helmed), the filmmakers have followed the fallout of the so-called rage virus, which emptied London in the first film and brought soon-dashed hopes of the virus’ eradication in the second movie.