Apocalyptic delight

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2005)

I absolutely love movies about the apocalypse. I'm sorry, but I find it absolutely romantic to watch movies about the end of the world. Yeah, I know I am crazy, but it is my weird fetish. This movie did not disappoint. The first 20 minutes of this movie was absolutely horrifying. I could literally feel my blood pressure and my heart rate climb to fear induced levels. Yes, I was actually scared, and my body was responding to it. It is crazy to be attacked by someone you love. In this movie her own husband and a trusted girl attack the main character Sara. I loved it when she ran out of her house to escape to see the whole city in chaos. Her neighbor was pointing a gun at her, and all the houses were on fire. Her neighbors were being slaughtered right in front of her. It made the hair on my neck stand up! The first 20 minutes of the move had me hooked. She escapes the situation and gets together with survivors at the local mall. Unfortunately the rest of the movie was situated in the mall. I would have preferred a movie where the characters were continuously on the run, (similar to 28 Days). The mall scenes were mildly scary, but the situation was different in the mall. The mall gave the characters a sense of security that lessened the fear of the situation. The mall kept the "living dead" out, and it gave the characters a security that actually made me relax. I would have like them to be put in uncomfortable situations throughout the movie. I felt that they were given too much control. The mall was a barrier between the living and the dead, and I feel that the barrier should have been blurred. Beyond my negativity, I still feel that this movie was an above average horror movie. I wish I had monitors hooked up to me during this movie. There were certain scenes that would have caused the monitors to go off in "code blue" mode. I can say that I was scared at moments, and I feel that a movie has succeeded if it can cause emotion such as panic.
I would like to add I was the only person that stayed in the theater to see the end credits. The end credits showed what happened when the boat reached the island. Freaking' Awesome ending! It was the most exciting end credits I have seen in a movie.