Spoilers ahead for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
The horror genre's current renaissance is showing no signs of slowing down, with some of the best horror movies returning with new sequels. That includes 28 Days Later, which has treated fans to two new sequels in quick succession. The Bone Temple is in theaters now, and director Nia DaCosta spoke to CinemaBlend about one sequence that she was originally nervous about, and thinking about how "crazy" it would be.
The Bone Temple picks up immediately after 28 Years Later's ending, and we follow Spike as he attempts to survive living with the Jimmys. Ralph Fiennes also returns as Kelson, whom the cult of murders think is Satan himself. The third act features the Harry Potter star putting on a wild fire show and dance number to convince them he's actually the Dark Lord, to hilarious and epic results. I spoke with DaCosta ahead of the movie's wide release, and she shared her initial trepidation to that sequence, telling me:
It's so crazy. So I remember reading it and I was like 'Ugh that's gonna be tricky, isn't it?' I was really nervous about it, but being like, 'If I pull this off then it'll be epic.' And, um, and uh, I think the producers were also like 'Ugh.' And then Alex is a bit like 'LOL. Yeah. You know, it's crazy. Like, I don't have to do it. So good luck.'
The Candyman director clarified that she was joking about Alex Garland's reaction, although her nerves about bringing Ralph Fiennes' pyrotechnic performance of Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast" were very real. Luckily, she had some great support behind her in order to nail this memorable scene from 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
The Bone Temple's ending kicks off with this fiery musical number, and an outstanding performance by Ralph Fiennes. While Nia DaCosta was originally nervous about bringing that sequence together, she spoke to me about how her collaborators helped to pull it off. In her words:
But I just really trusted my collaborators and the process. We started thinking about it from the beginning of prep and I just knew by the time we got to the end of prep, you know, what that sequence would be. And it was really just like, you know, production designers, Gavin Carson, who are also the costume designers are just so brilliant and they come from a live performance and fashion and theater background. So I was just like 'They're gonna be the perfect people to work with on this.'
She's not wrong. The entire sequence really came together in the theatrical cut of The Bone Temple, resulting in epic moments as well as some comedic beats. The Jimmys were raised in an apocalyptic world void of technology and rock music, so their reaction to Kelson made sense... even if it was funny to audiences to knew the truth about Fiennes' character not actually being Satan.
Later in our same conversation, DaCosta shared a few more reasons why this daunting scene in the horror sequel ultimately paid off. As she told me:
And then I had Shelly Maxwell, my choreographer I worked with twice before, a movement director. She came in to figure out, you know, what Ralph was gonna do and all that stuff. So we just built it together and it ended up being so wonderful and such an amazing example of like all the departments coming together to just make something special.
Filmmaking is a collaborative art form, and this is just one example of the way various departments come together in order to make a movie exist. On the page Kelson's pyrotechnic number was daunting, but Nia DaCosta worked and trusted her crew and designers, and it worked out in a big way.
The Bone Temple brought Cillian Murphy back to the franchise, and set up a third installment which would round out a new trilogy. It's unclear when that upcoming horror movie will will actually start production, but hopefully we get more information about that soon.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in theaters now as part of the 2026 movie release list. We'll have to wait and see if/when the threequel gets officially greenlit.
