One of last years "8 Films to Die For" is a New York Lensed tale of a zombie/28 Days Later tale of biological horror set in New Yorks Lower East Side as some disease spread by rat bite and later people bite turns people in hungry beasts.<br /><br />Clearly filmed in New York in real locations this film feels like New York. It lives and breaths the locations it was filmed in ways that big budgeted films never do. The street scenes were apparently filmed on the sly and the result is a real sense of the City where things are really happening. This is New York for real.<br /><br />The film starts off with a great deal of character building (hey real characters in a horror movie-what a novel idea) that perhaps goes on a bit too long. Still it sets everyone up so nicely that when then infected begin to assault the people we've come to know we are more than horrified, we are saddened by their fates. I don't know when it was the last time I was choked up at a horror film. To be honest there maybe a bit too much of these building scenes since the film seems to slow down too much around the half hour mark. Things turn up a few notches once the infection spreads and Manhattan is sealed off. How will our heroes survive? Once things begin to heat up the film becomes a series of sequences that play very real as the infected begin to beat and bash their way into the buildings and apartments. There are many stunning images that seem to have raised the bar of films like this for their stark sense of realism and in your face nature. Most of the second half of the film is dynamite as everyone tries to figure out whats going on and how to survive.<br /><br />I really liked this film a great deal. Granted its not perfect, the film does take too long to start up and its sometimes too close to the action, as if the cinematographer didn't realize how some of the up close fast moving images would look on a big screen, but it certainly is worth seeing.<br /><br />6.5 to 7 out of 10.