Everybody's a critic - '28 Days Later'

One star (out of 4)

Name 3 things that occur after 28 days: Sandra Bullock gets sober after her movie rehab; March begins after the cold weather of February; The entire civilization of the world is destroyed after a virus is released in London.

Number 3 is the basis for the latest science fiction movie "28 Days Later."

"28 Days Later" is the story of a virus that is accidentally released from a laboratory when some animal-rights people try to release infected monkeys. The virus causes humans to become zombies and attack others. The zombies kill everyone in London except a few civilians and a renegade group of British soldiers.

If you're looking for a good zombie movie rent "Night of the Living Dead." You can wait to see "28 Days Later" on the Sci-Fi channel in a few months during Zombie Week.

- Steve Marchbanks, insurance sales

Three stars (out of 4)

Maybe my movie smarts are a little sophomoric, but I thought zombies moaned for brains and struggled with stiff joints. "28 Days Later"'s "Scary as Hell" isn't entirely, but it is startling, as in "Jesus! There's a zombie!" and "Whoa. I didn't think you could kill a guy with your thumbs."

It's a gritty, fish-and-chipped "Night of the Living Dead" with underlying themes from "Lord of the Flies." If there ever was a global infection derived by monkeys that turned everyone into skin-snackers, the world could play out like this. To start, everyone is killing everyone. Then you have red-eyes chasing you, so you're still killing off the undead. Then those you'd think could put matters aside while there's a population of crawling cadavers can't, and we're back to everyone killing everyone. Go out, enjoy and get your monkeypox vaccine.

- Matthew Heisserer, college student

Two stars (out of 4)

If you liked the music video "Thriller" by Michael Jackson you will probably enjoy director Danny Boyle's latest picture, "28 Days Later." The first 10 minutes introduce us to Jim (Cillian Murphy), who wakes up from a coma only to find the city of London completely shut down and not a soul anywhere to be found. He stumbles across Selena and Mark, who explain to him about the rage virus that has infected not only London and the surrounding countries but also New York.

From this point on the movie loses steam as our characters travel the countryside trying to find anyone else who is not infected with the virus. We are never able to play along and try to guess who might or might not be infected because once you are infected you are a zombie in 20 seconds. So we always know. Not real smart.

- Rick Prost, produce grocer