to the cast and crew on an excellent take of a tired genre!

outstanding as the anchor of the group. French Stewart is superb in a role that allows him to stretch as an actor with wonderful results. The scenes on the Golden Gate bridge are especially haunting and the imagery of zombies climbing up the bridge to reach survivors will stay with you for months. The vast vistas of carnage and the devastated bridge roadway are incredibly realistic and breathtaking to see. The idea of a Zombie Apocalypse is an alien concept to most of us and something seldom attempted in other genre films. Director Lyon tackles the enormity of this vision with gusto and his film becomes on of the truly horrifying zombie films in decades.

attack on the suburban neighborhood of the zombies taking over the house leading to the mad dash to escape in the car through the streets leading into another fine attack at the end, though the massive attack on the group in their island fortress is even more fun. From the massive swarm that overruns the hallways taking along the different bodies forcing plenty of gunfire and panic to get to safety as the creatures continue pushing their way through the defenses and eating the few left stranded, this is a fantastic action scene that's incredibly lengthy and generates the kind of excitement in the opening that's required for this one to start well. The later action scenes here are somewhat enjoyable as the group gets ambushed in the house providing this one with some fun trying to hold off the attacks while the big action scene of their encounter on the bridge allows for more explosive action blowing them to pieces as well as the thrilling moments of the zombies silently emerging from the water ready to attack. As well, there's even more action encounters in the final half here with this one giving several outstanding zombie swarms from the police station encounter, the attack on beach and the biggest moment here in the attack at the research lab where there's massive fights to get past and the swarm and the frantic race to get to the escape helicopter past the creatures. The result of these action scenes here gives the film a rather frenetic pace due to the zombies being front and center, and the fact that there's the nice zombie make- up and the graphic gore to be displayed, which here is quite gruesome and really worthwhile, helping to add to this one immensely. These issues all make this one enjoyable even though there's a few small flaws here. While the frequent interjections back to the compound studying the effects of the virus are quite original, the only real problem here is the rather cliché nature of it all, managing to feel as though it's all a rip-off of the current state of zombie-dom rather than doing anything original or creative with the material, and that hurts this somewhat. Likewise, this continuous shifting back does delay some of the zombie action to a point and slow the film down somewhat during the point in the film where it's right among the point where you'd want the action to continue instead of stopping for a break. As well, there's some dodgy CGI here that creeps in at some rather odd moments that don't really need CGI which allows for some rather hard times here with scenes that shouldn't be that way. None of these are enough to be completely damaging, but it is present and lowers what could've been a great entry from the positive points here.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.