The only living boy in London

28 Days Later

(2002)

OK, I'll acknowledge that plausibility is an atypical criterion in rating horror flicks, but one reason why this is my all-time favorite zombie movie is that the premise--that misguided science could isolate and distill a virus responsible for rage--seems a heck of a lot likelier than meteorites animating recently dead people, for example.

Another reason is that the deserted-London sequence early in the film is one of the spookiest bits I've seen in any film, regardless of genre. Yet another is that it's the first zombie film I'm aware of in which the zombies have sprinter speed, which just makes them lots more of a threat than the lumbering dead of George Romero's franchise.

It's also an improbably sweet film--a film about family values. And it's a film that, while touching all the mandatory generic tropes, never really lets you guess where it's going. Ultimately, it's my all-time favorite zombie film because it's an excellent film, full stop.