Editorials
31 Things We Learned from Nia DaCosta’s ‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ Commentary
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later remains a thrilling, punk rock slice of horror, and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later, is better than its reputation suggests. Fans waited a long time for a third entry, and it arrived last year to critical and commercial acclaim – but I’m not a fan.
I’m in the minority, I know, but Boyle’s return to the franchise is a disappointment, thanks in large part to that little shit Spike, who I was hoping would bite it at every turn. (Don’t get me started.)
My feelings towards that film left me a bit apathetic towards 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, so I skipped it in theaters (along with most audiences, apparently)… only to absolutely love it when I finally watched it on VOD. This makes me part of the problem, I know, and I’m very sorry. Nia DaCosta delivers an incredibly beautiful and thrilling entry into the franchise – that’s also one of 2026’s best films – and I’ve already watched it three times.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)
Commentator: Nia DaCosta (director)
1. While previous films in the franchise opened with scenes that led to the title chyron, they decided to go with an audio soundscape here instead. It builds to a single word, “Hello?” which is taken from Jim (Cillian Murphy) in the first film. “That’s Jim’s voice from 28 Days Later when he’s holding his little plastic bag and looking for people in the streets of London.”
2. The sign saying “No children beyond this point” was added for a laugh.
3. Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) was scripted to be wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit, but O’Connell suggested the purple velour one instead.
4. The opening scene with Spike (Alfie Williams) fighting for his life was filmed in a leisure center that had shut down during the pandemic. “But when you go in there, it felt like it had been shut down for 28 years.” It was chosen because DaCosta wanted it to feel whimsical and childlike on the outside but rotted and dying within – just like the Jimmies.
5. She doesn’t typically employ whip pans in her films, but their Trinity camera operator, Simon Wood, had made some modifications to the rig that allowed for pans that “slam to a stop really directly on either side of the whip.” She felt the madness of a whip pan met the madness of the Jimmies.
6. It was important to DaCosta that this be the only sequel in the series (so far) that doesn’t start with a scene featuring the infected. “It shows we’re sort of shifting what we’re saying about this world, which is that the infected, at this point, are just part of the flora and fauna.”
7. She had asked O’Connell to do something to mark Jimmy Shite’s (Connor Newall) death by doing something with his soul, and he came up with this bit at 6:01, where he takes it and releases it into the air above. Between the added sound effect and Jimmy Jones’ (Maura Bird) look upward, it’s one of her favorite beats in the film.
8. The scene with Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) cleaning bones only to find a moth on one came about because Fiennes found it and added it himself. DaCosta loves it as “moths made me think of death and renewal, so it was a nice thematic little guy.”
9. DaCosta and Fiennes discussed the scene in Kelson’s bunker where he strips down, and they agreed that “him being completely naked and alone and vulnerable, it just shows how sad it all is. This is all he has, and he’s just a man.”
10. She often kept the camera running during Kelson’s scenes because Fiennes would often add little beats. One comes at 18:24 when Kelson touches Sampson’s (Chi Lewis-Parry) shoulder after darting him. “So much of what you see between them in the film that’s action or them interacting” is stuff that was captured off script.
11. DaCosta really only knew Duran Duran for the songs “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Girls on Film,” but she’s since become a big fan. “Ordinary World” is a new favorite of hers and one she sings all the time.
12. She names a character Jane Ji in all of her movies, as it’s the name of one of her best friends.
13. DaCosta was entertained but initially confused when she first read Alex Garland’s script pages for the scene at the 32:00 mark. “Alex, what are you talking about, babe?” she recalls thinking before getting it. “It’s really fun to see, in a movie like this, something so strange happening that has nothing to do with violence.”
14. They made gradual changes to Samson’s look as the film progresses to highlight his shift back towards humanity. He becomes less monstrous on the surface to mirror the changes within.
15. “My jaw dropped when I read that in the script,” she says after Samson utters “moon.” The scene is about mercy and loss, leading Kelson towards surrender, but that one word renews his drive and the connection between two people.
16. She’s impressed by everyone on her production team, but she’s especially wowed by the stunt performer who does the fire gag in the barn. He had to be lit on fire three times, each time getting lathered up with the gel, putting on the costume and mask, and getting lathered up again. One thing DaCosta learned was that performers have to hold their breath while they burn so that they don’t inhale the flames.
17. “And that’s the last we see of Cathy (Mirren Mack) for this movie, but she will return,” says DaCosta with absolute certainty that we’re getting the third film of the trilogy. (I hope she’s right!)
18. Samson is nude throughout the script, but DaCosta wanted to show those visual hints of his re-awakening humanity. One was him turning his palm up to the rain, and another was turning cloth into clothes and wiping his berry-stained fingers on it.
19. She made sure to find moments that highlighted just how much of an idiot Crystal is “because that’s how I feel about these kinds of leaders.” “Usually with a cult leader or a garbage president or prime minister,” she adds, “the way that they get people to follow them isn’t necessarily that they’re intelligent in any way, shape or form. It’s charisma and power, and when you look at those people outside of that context, you also see how silly they are.”
20. DaCosta is a big fan of how Garland’s script “continues to explore the infection and what it means.” The scene where Kelson explains and administers his hopeful psychotropic concoction to Samson touches on the distinction between zombie films and rage-virus stories like this – the people are still inside the infected, and while death can’t be cured (sorry, Herbert West!), a virus possibly could be.
21. She sees the train in the film as similar to the mall in Dawn of the Dead. “Where do I go? Back to the thing that I have the strongest memory of?” For Samson, that thing is a train like the one where he was first infected.
22. DaCosta cameos very briefly as a train passenger during the flashback at 1:20:20. “I’m in this movie for some reason on the left there.”
23. She recalls reaching the point in the script where Kelson puts on his devilish show to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast,” and thinking, “How the hell is this gonna work?” She figured it would either ruin her career or become a defining scene, and happily, it instantly became the latter.
24. The sequence saw them using the Lensbaby during Kelson’s show. “It’s just a lens that is so inconsistent, and you just get that blurriness that you see there.” She said she wanted it “to feel like kids moshing at a concert,” an experience that is wholly new to them, given the situation of the world, but here it’s them communing with the devil.
25. That’s a performer named Otto doing the end bit in the protective outfit and fire-spitting barbell. DaCosta worried at first that it might be too much, but she ultimately realized it fit both the scene and the song perfectly.
26. Williams was a minor during production, meaning they only had three hours per night to film with him. So, pretty much anytime you see him from behind or in the mask, it’s actually his stand-in, a young woman named Jess Bell.
27. “At whose expense do you enjoy your freedom?” is something she asks and sees as a theme here, as Kelson realizes what letting Crystal go could mean for others. Fiennes does great work showing that internal dialogue, and it’s only when he realizes Spike is there that he falls completely on one side with his answer. “And that’s why Kelson’s a really good person.”
28. She sees Spike’s journey as part coming of age as he ends the first film thinking he needs to be on his own, but ends this one knowing that he needs other people to survive. He’s basically the prodigal son who goes out to see the world but eventually returns home, “so maybe we’ll see some of that in the third film.”
29. “Nothing is, no one is, there’s just us, is also my belief system,” she says regarding Kelson’s reply to Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman) asking if he’s Satan. “That’s beautiful.”
30. The music from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon was something of a reference point for her in conversations with this film’s composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir.
31. They went back to the exact same house from the finale of 28 Days Later. “It was so cool. The same people live in the house, the house is exactly the same.” She was equally excited to be the one who got to bring Jim back for the first time.
Quotes Without Context
“Thank you, Sony, for your money.”
“I really like special effects, especially when they have to do with cuts or blood or gore, I think it’s really fun.”
“I really hate VFX blood cause it looks so fake.”
“Ralph Fiennes is an icon of our times and a national treasure.”
“That shot before was the real woman, and this is the dummy, obviously, because we can’t just be throwing women off of cliffs anymore.”
“Seeing all that brain in his beard is truly… I can’t look at it.”
“We see him in the first movie, and he seems like this whimsical sort of kook who’s like ‘I’m gonna kill your mom.’”
“Since he’s so lonely, he’s like ‘Let me go talk to that one guy I met,’ which I love for him.”
“One of several shots where we’re like, ‘Let’s just crop out the penis.’”
“Like what is up with their vocal cords, bro?”
“So much oatmeal water we used as vomit in this film.”
“It’s given her a bit of a hate boner for people who underestimate her.”
“Basically, this whole scene to me is like that children’s book, Are You My Mother? Where the baby bird’s talking to all these inanimate objects and other animals, looking for his mom.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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