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Welcome, Popversians, to The Coldest Open - the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. If you're reading this on the day it was published, then you're probably doing so on your way (or at least, in preparation for) a certain zombie flick that brings a beloved horror franchise back from the proverbial dead after nearly two decades off-screen. I'm speaking of course of 2025's 28 Years Later, and in honor of that film, we're going to cover the movie that started it all: Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.

But first, let's go over how this column works: In the Coldest Open, I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

Sound good? Great. Go ahead and stretch your legs, let's start running from some fast goddamn zombies.

28 Days Later's Cold-Blooded Killer

Unlike your standard horror movie villain - whether that's a slasher in a mask or a creature with a taste for blood - the true baddie of 28 Days Later is never actually seen on screen. Or rather, it might be, if we were watching through a microscope. 

The infamous Rage Virus is the killer at the heart of the 28 Days franchise. So in the first moments of the film, set in a laboratory from which the virus escapes, director Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland had to find a way to make that illness as frightening as possible. One way they accomplish that is the blood fountain that our first human infection spews toward the end of the opening, but even before that, they make brilliant use of chimps to convey the terror.

Due to their similarities with our own species, chimps can be both absolutely adorable and utterly terrifying. That's almost us, says one part of your brain, while another voice warns you to keep your distance. That sympathy we feel makes a chimpanzee's temper tantrum an absolutely chilling sight to behold, because, on some level, we're picturing our own humanity being lost, reduced to something wild and violent.

Which is exactly what Boyle and Garland are telling us is going to happen.

Verdict: Cold

28 Days Later's First Person to Get Iced

While we're on the subject of sympathy - how about those first Rage Virus victims? While they appear to be nefarious at first glance, all ski masks and tactical clothing, we quickly come to empathize with them as soon as the masks come off and we realize why they're in the lab: they're here to free the chimps. 

Part of the point of 28 Days Later is that humanity is a complex beast - sometimes noble, sometimes wicked, sometimes noble in their wickedness. And these three extreme animal rights activists, played by Alex Palmer, Jukka Hiltunen, and Bindu De Stoppani respectively, are our first introduction to that. Sure, their hearts may be in the right place, but by ignoring the warnings of an unnamed scientist (David Schneider) and freeing one of the chimps, they become the cause of millions and millions of deaths. How many of humanity's great calamities, you have to wonder, started with someone trying too hard to do a decent thing?

Quick fun fact before we move on - in the 2007 graphic novel tie-in 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, it's revealed that our first victims are part of a group called the Animal Freedom Foundation. 

Verdict: Cold

28 Days Later's Polar Plot Intro

If you watch the opening seconds of 28 Days Later, which are violent news clips from around the world, you might think that the purpose is to set the stage for the violence that is about to unfold. I'm not saying it's not that at all - someone with the filmmaking prowess of Danny Boyle can layer meanings into an image on screen. But I think there's a different, even more important reason he chose to open the movie this way, and that was to set 28 Days Later squarely in the modern day.

Which modern day? Well, that really doesn't matter. The bombs and rising smoke in those clips probably reminded people of the early days of the Iraq War and the horrors of 9/11 when the movie first came out in 2002, but the police decked out in riot gear and liberally using tear gas could be footage from the LA No Kings protest just a week ago as of this writing. In the same way that found footage horror uses unpolished visuals to tell you that "you could be here, this could be you," Boyle and Garland used TV screens playing sights they knew their audience would find familiar.

Verdict: Cold

28 Days Later's Frozen Snapshots

And while we're on the subject of imagery, let's talk about why 28 Days Later feels so true to life, even in its first few minutes. Despite the relatively modest $8M budget that went into the movie, Boyle's first zombie flick feels low-budget at points, appropriately so considering the history of do-it-yourself zombie filmmaking. That boils down to the fact that, for much of the film, Boyle was shooting with a Canon XL1 digital video camera, not unlike the ones that parents around the world were using to film their kids' birthday parties at the very same time.

Don't get me wrong - calling 28 Days Later a found footage movie would be incorrect, and nowhere in the film are you supposed to think that there's a character holding a camera documenting this. But the ground-level imagery does an incredible job reminding us that the story we're getting into isn't about world leaders and celebrities, who tend to be airbrushed and well-lit - it's about you and me, who get our lives (and in this case, deaths) documented via whichever mass-market camera is most available.

Verdict: Cold

28 Days Later's Bone-Chilling Music

I'm just going to say this now - there are very few perfect opening sequences out there, and unfortunately, we've come to the part of this one that's just a little bit underwhelming. Don't get me wrong - the soundtrack for 28 Days Later is a masterpiece. Scored by John Murphy, it included contributions from none other than Brian Eno himself, and the track "In The House – In A Heartbeat" has been reused across the pop culture landscape. And that's not even mentioning the usage of that old hymn "Abide With Me" as Cillian Murphy's Jim explores a ravaged London.

But the thing is, all of that comes later. The opening music of 28 Days Later is slow, rhythmic, and synthesized, and while that does an incredible job building up the quiet tension of the activists' initial break-in, it's kind of odd to still be hearing it when one of them is actively turning into a bile-spitting monster. Especially when you consider the electric guitar treatment that the infected will get later in the movie.

Incredible electric guitar, I should add.

Verdict: Warm

28 Days Later's Cold Open Temperature: Frozen Solid

There have been entire movies made about the Patient Zero of a standard zombie apocalypse, but none of them have quite the punch as the first four-ish minutes of the opening of 28 Days Later. Everything that the movie (and I guess, the franchise) will become is distilled in these first couple of tragic, chaotic, and grounded moments, despite the fact that not a single character we meet here will ever be seen again.

Unless of course there's a zombie chimp B-plot in the upcoming sequel The Bone Temple. Which, hey, I'd be here for.

28 Years Later is in theaters June 20. 28 Days Later is streaming now (for free!) on Pluto TV.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." We couldn't agree more, which is why we've cobbled together a couple pieces to send a chill up your spine. Join Popverse as we explore:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.