I was really happy when the proper East End geezer joined the cast of EastEnders, I'd previously only seen two of his films, Human Traffic and Severance, with Halloween on the way I thought I'd try one of his horror films. Basically in the not too distant future leading pharmaceutical company Newgen Industries is in the final stages of testing its new "legal performance enhancer", RAK-29, testing has met with spectacular failure as the drug has caused physical and allergic reactions for over 30,000 test subjects, causing a media uproar. But the side effects worsen and test subjects become increasingly violent until they are nothing more than marauding beasts, and their bites are infectious, turning anyone bitten into flesh eating zombies like them. Dr. Michael Brooke (Del Henney) identifies only one test subject who has not turned into a bloodthirsty monster, pregnant woman Angela Mills (The Descent's MyAnna Buring), her immunity makes her the only hope to find a cure for the plague that threatens the world. Despite handing in his resignation to CEO Peter White (Colin Salmon), N-Gen mercenary and hardened killer Cole (EastEnders' Craig Fairbrass) is given the mission to find and protect Angela to bring her in for examination. Cole is joined by other survivors, including Joe (Danny Dyer), but Cole's mission becomes much more difficult when he is bitten himself, he injects himself with a drug that will slow the process of infection, but will Angela stay safe and sound to save the world from apocalypse. Also starring Jaime Murray as Lavinia, Shane Taylor as Geoffrey, Sean Pertwee as Rob and Mike & Angelo's Tim Whitnall as News Anchor. Dyer gets a little swearing as usual and acts a vague hero, but not much else, Fairbrass is tougher, and the other cast members do their stuff fine, the film certainly has a fair amount of blood, guts and violence to keep scary movies fans happy, but it is let down but a lacklustre script and a predictable story, a pretty pointless science-fiction horror. Adequate!

Mark McQueen superb direction of screenwriter Bart Ruspoli's brilliant script results in an apocalyptic vision of uncompromising horror. This is a stunning concept based upon the idea that somehow the dead have come back to life and an apocalypse of the undead has devastated civilization. With this unique foundation, McQueen builds a masterpiece of vast vistas of a city of horror, painted with imagery of bleak beauty so haunting it's unforgettable. This is the end of the world at its most powerful. Superb performances from an outstanding cast bring to life characters of touching depth and overwhelming humanity. Craig Fairbrass and Danny Dyer are particularly effective as men fighting for their lives as they try to protect those in their care. A magnificent film of unrelenting terror and supreme suspense, this is much more than simply one more zombie movie.

(38%) Yet another modern zombie flick that has nothing new to add at all, there's almost no reason at all why anyone needs to see this; yet somehow I oddly kind of enjoyed this cheap, simple, decently packaged fast zombie slice of throwaway B-movie fluff. This attempts to follow on the footsteps of the much better 21 days later with the zombies infected with some sort of chemical, only here the scientists featured are wholly incompetent with their 100% fail rate resulting in the zombie outbreak. Low end British star Danny Dyer plays (shock horror) a tough London crook, though he isn't really the main focus here which is on quite a wide assortment of little known faces. There's plenty of what most people want from a film of this type (blood, zombies getting smashed up) which is enough for a half recommendation, though there's nothing else here of any value whatsoever.

I'm a fan of horror movies, and Devil's Playground is really not as bad as to deserve less than 5 stars. It's definitely above average. I have seen a lot more worse zombie flicks. I like the storyline and most importantly, this movie managed to keep me on tenterhooks. When the new testing drug, that was made to enhance physical performance failed and turned the 29,999 testers into athletic zombies. Cole (the mercenary), under the last plead from a dying scientist has to find Angela in time. As she was the #30,000 tester unaccounted for and most likely was immune to it. Ignore the negative reviews here and watch the show for yourself (That's what i did and i have no regrets).