Imagine the scene: vacant-eyed undead reel around the East End of London chomping off the appendages of anyone in their path. And it's not Millwall at home.

Director Danny Boyle scored a massive viscera-stained hit with his tale of animal rights activists unwittingly unleashing a murderous virus on the good folk of London town.

Fast-forward half-a-year and American forces have wiped out the bloodlusting undead and set up a secure quarantined zone - District One - in the gleaming towers on the Isle of Dogs.

Snipers on roofs, helicopter gunships whirling around Canary Wharf, heavily-armed Hummers darting around Poplar's less salubrious council estates, they seem to have it covered.

However, there is an Achilles' Heel. Or rather, the infected bloodstream of virus survivor Alice (McCormack). And it's gone undetected after - symptomless - she was brought into the medical centre.

Alice is the wife of Don (Carlyle), who left her for dead when the cottage in which they were hiding was overrun by carnivorous cadavers who made a quick meal of the kindly old couple who offered them sanctuary.

Fortunately, Alice and Don's kids - Tammy (Poots) and Andy (Muggleton) were on holiday in Spain when the virus struck...but now they're two of the first arrivals at District One. And keeping mum is the last thing they should be thinking.

Boyle's 2002 original basically reinvented the zombie genre in Blighty, re-setting the action in a eerily deserted London and adding fleet-footed undead to the mix.

Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo refines the successful template, tightening up the narrative and introducing a human dimension that lends the whole blood-spattered premise a grim plausibility.

Carlyle's anguished face as he leaves his screaming wife to her fate at a besieged cottage packs just as much emotional clout as gung-ho US troops taking out a fleeing crowd teeming with both the infected and uninfected alike.

The gore count ranges from a terrifyingly brutal murder (the thumbs in eye sockets scene isn't pretty) to an almost comedic role for a helicopter's rotor blades as a sort of improvised Flymo for decapitating a band of marauding undead.

It's superior horror fare which leaves you nervously speculating about what's going to be happening 28 months down the line.

Tim Evans