Sex scenes weren't that shocking

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2004)

First of all, I agree this film is a 9/10 effort. I haven't seen the original so I cannot compare, but I would put this movie up there with other horror movie greats like 28 Days later. The intro sequence is so absolutely haunting and apocalyptic, it sets up the rest of the movie perfectly without needing to constantly cut away from the characters and explain what was going on elsewhere.
Admittedly, there are a few lapses in believability such as the characters knowing exactly which boat to pick when they finally get to the Mariner - however this can be forgiven as a this is a zombie movie - the story already requires your suspension of disbelief to work at all.
My favourite touch was the hilarious mall 'muzak' which featured wildly inappropriate background tunes playing over the PA system - songs such as "Don't Worry, Be Happy" as they first enter the mall, and later after they (stupidly) split up, it changes to "Don't Wanna Be By Myself " ... plus a few others. It's little touches like these that make the movie so good, in my opinion.
There are two sex scenes I can remember - the first is a romantic scene with the central nurse character and her man, seen through a shower screen - tame enough in any MA 15+ movie - with another sex scene suddenly popping up later in the movie. It goes for all of five seconds, and although it is quite graphic, I cannot agree with the assertion of some other reviewers that somehow on screen sex is disturbing and unacceptable, because the violence in this movie - such as dead children ripping out peoples throats, spikes getting stuck through peoples heads, heads exploding etc - has to be seen as far worse. You can't condemn the sex without condemning the violence, and since you know that there's going to have to be violence in a horror film, there's no point whining about that tiny bit of sex.
A little sex never hurt anybody; violence on the other hand is painful, cruel and inhumane.