The 28 Days Later universe has always traded as much on emptiness as on outright, in-your-face terror: deserted streets, abandoned institutions, and the erosion of social trust. When Cillian Murphy’s Jim woke to a deserted London in Danny Boyle’s 2002 film, the shock wasn’t just the infected, but the world left behind after everything else had fallen apart.
More than two decades on, that same disquieting atmosphere still hangs over the franchise – even as its focus shifts.
Last summer’s 28 Years Later, directed by Boyle and written by Alex Garland, returned audiences to a Britain nearly three decades after the Rage virus first escaped a Cambridge laboratory. Instead of simply revisiting the chaos of the original outbreak, the film reframed the series as a long-view meditation on survival, memory, and the makeshift structures that replace the old world once it has fallen. Its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, released this week, pushes those ideas further – and in an even more disturbing and weirder direction.
This time, the director’s chair belongs to Nia DaCosta, whose previous work (Candyman, Hedda, episodes of Top Boy) has established her as a filmmaker attuned to the way fear intersects with power, history, and belief. That makes her a savvy choice to take the reins and bring a new perspective to the franchise. Early reactions to The Bone Temple have already greenlit a third and final film, making this instalment the hinge of the new trilogy and reassuring audiences that the story will reach a proper conclusion rather than end on a cliffhanger.
With 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple opening in UK cinemas today and rolling out internationally this Friday, SCREAM spoke to Nia DaCosta about what shaped the film’s perspective on survival and unchecked power, the challenge of finding a personal directorial voice in a universe so strongly associated with Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, and how The Bone Temple approaches questions of power, faith, and collective memory.
Words: Howard Gorman
