Scottish band Young Fathers behind 28 Years Later soundtrack
28 Years Later stars Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the husband-and-wife duo, Isla and Jamie, and their 12-year-old son Spike, played by Alfie Williams, as they prepare to head out to the infected mainland for the first time.
The hip hop group featuring Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham Hastings, who are from Edinburgh, were hand-picked by director Boyle despite having no experience working on film before.
'I don't know whether they'd like this description, but they're sort of like the Beach Boys, but so hardcore,' Boyle (below) told Rolling Stone UK when speaking about the group.
'I guess that's kind of their use of harmonies and melodies in their music.'
Explaining how he got Young Fathers onboard with the project, Boyle said: 'It was a huge risk because they'd never done a movie before and it's that thing with any pop group, are you gonna trust the whole movie to them?
'But you go yeah! Yeah! Sony didn't know the first thing about them, but they were wonderful. We had a wonderful back and forth and I went up to Edinburgh to their studio, which is a shed.
'It literally isn't even a garage – it's a shed, and they produce extraordinary stuff there. It was very beautiful. There's some of the stuff you'd expect from them in there, which gives a very different flavour to the film.'
Young Fathers won the prestigious Mercury Prize in 2014 for their debut album Dead and were nominated for a second time in 2023 for their fourth studio album, Heavy, Heavy.
Known for their layered, genre-resistant and politically influenced sound, the soundtrack for 28 Years Later weaves lo-fi textures, chants, off-kilter synths and heavy percussion.
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Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
28 Years Later's incendiary Jimmy Savile twist: All your questions, answered
Contains spoilers for 28 Years Later Now then, now then. When I attended a press screening for 28 Years Later the week before release, a note sent with the tickets asked us not to spoil the ending in our reviews. This is a common ploy by publicists seeking to build buzz and intrigue, and often the result is disappointing. (Think a Marvel character you've never heard of appearing for 15 seconds.) However, when Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's excellent zombie epic ends with the introduction of Jack O'Connell's character Sir Jimmy Crystal and his band of murderous desperadoes, all of whom are dressed in colour-coded outfits that come over as a cross between the Power Rangers and the infamous Jimmy Savile, to the accompaniment of the Teletubbies ' 'One, two, three, four!' on the soundtrack, it is a jaw-droppingly provocative and incendiary ending. For once, it really did need to be left for audiences to discover it for themselves, rather than having it spoilt by critics. The film makes great play of (specifically British) audiences' knowledge of the chilling spectacle of Savile, a DJ, presenter of the wish-fulfilment show Jim'll Fix It and, we now know, notorious rapist, paedophile and suspected necrophile. He has become rightly despised as one of the most evil men that Britain has ever seen since his death in 2011. Even during his lifetime, and fame, there was clearly something not right about him. Savile would make black humoured jokes about how he had only evaded detection for his many crimes because of his charity work – jokes that no longer seem very funny – and took an almost perverse pride in how his closeness to the establishment allowed him to groom and assault his victims with impunity. Overseas audiences will inevitably know less about him, and so should probably watch the comprehensive 2022 Netflix documentary Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, which explores his crimes in sickening depth. Perhaps surprisingly, he has been largely kept out of fiction. A recent Steve Coogan drama, The Reckoning, explored his grim life and depraved antics, and it was also suggested in series three of Line of Duty that the character was somehow involved with the (fictitious) details of child sexual abuse as depicted in the show. However, film-makers know that accusations of opportunism and bad taste might be made if he was to be included in mainstream drama. These accusations have now indeed been levelled, in some quarters, against 28 Years Later and its makers. To say that the ending has proved divisive, especially in the United States, would be an understatement. (Not that the twist has hurt the film's box office performance; half its $60 million opening weekend haul has come from the US.) Yet Boyle and Garland have never been film-makers who have taken the easy option – think about the various outrageous and shocking scenes in their films, encompassing everything from Trainspotting and Ex Machina to their previous collaborations, Sunshine and 28 Days Later – and so this full-strength conclusion to the picture not only sets up next year's sequel, The Bone Temple, very intriguingly, but also leaves audiences with numerous questions which deserve answering. Who are Sir Jimmy Crystal and his gang? The introduction of the presumably villainous Sir Jimmy in the closing moments of 28 Years Later gives an already unsettling film a horrific jolt. As he and his companions – also all referred to as 'Jimmy' – set about murdering a group of 'infected', as the film terms its zombies, with extreme, gleeful prejudice, it's a grim and shocking moment that brings A Clockwork Orange – a clear Boyle touchstone throughout his career – to mind. Yet the most disturbing aspect of the scene is that Sir Jimmy, and the other Jimmys, are all attired in hideous-coloured tracksuits, lengthy blonde wigs and have their hands festooned with jewellery: a clear homage to Savile. O'Connell – who, with his appearance as a sadistic Irish vampire in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, is surely becoming 2025's go-to villain for horror films – is too big a star to appear for as small a role as this. Audiences are promised that the Jimmys will return in a big way for The Bone Temple. When Sir Jimmy says to Alfie Williams's young protagonist Spike 'Let's be friends', the moment is chilling, not least because it seems quite clear that the Jimmys are not the kind of people anyone would want to be friends with. Yet the film has already teased his introduction with enormous sophistication. It's the young Jimmy who we meet in the terrifying prologue, set, appropriately enough, 28 years before the rest of the film. The boy is the sole survivor of the Teletubbies-inflected infected massacre and the recipient of his fanatical clergyman father's crucifix, which he's seen holding when he's reintroduced. There are lots of hints as to his reappearance, too, which many viewers may only pick up on with a second viewing. When Spike and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) head to the mainland for Spike's first kill of an infected, they find the body of a tortured figure hung up upside-down in an abandoned farmhouse, with the word 'Jimmy' carved onto it; the same word is scrawled all over the outside walls. From these little clues, it's quite clear that the Jimmy gang is a bunch of murderous sadists who are intent on causing as much mayhem and torment as they can. How and why, and how they've managed to survive for so long amidst the infected, will (presumably) be explained in the second film. Why are the Jimmys in thrall to Jimmy Savile? Although the Jimmy characters are not named in the film, the end credits reveal that they all have a suitably grim collection of surnames. We can expect to meet Jimmy Fox, Jimmy Snake, Jimmy Jones, the unimaginatively named Jimmy Jimmy, the more imaginatively named Jimmy S___e and their female equivalent, Jimmina. No doubt all of them are going to play a greater role in the sequel, but the small clues that we are given about their dispositions in 28 Years Later are that they're violent, have hideous taste in clothes and are all followers of O'Connell's Sir Jimmy: a self-bestowed title, unlike the knighthood bestowed upon Savile. It isn't made clear in this picture as to why they should all be fascinated by the ghoulish disc jockey and TV presenter, but Boyle and Garland have suggested in interviews that it all fits with the film's warped sense of England and Englishness. As Boyle told Business Insider: '[Savile is] as much to do with pop culture as he is to do with sportswear, to do with cricket, to do with the honours system. It's all kind of twisting in this partial remembrance, clinging onto things and then recreating them as an image for followers.' (Incidentally, Boyle himself was offered a knighthood after directing the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, and turned it down, saying 'it was insensitive of them to ask me, to be honest.') 🎬 | Bts photo of Erin Kellyman with the Jimmy gang on the set of '28 Years Later'. — Erin Kellyman Updates (@updateskellyman) June 23, 2025 Yet there's another telling detail that has been picked up on by eagle-eyed viewers who have been swift to disseminate it on Reddit forums. The film's prologue takes place around the same time that the first film was released, in the early years of the millennium, when Savile may have been regarded with suspicion (see the 2000 Louis Theroux documentary When Louis Met Jimmy) but was still seen by many (at least publicly) as a noble figure who had given his life, and fortune, to charity. Therefore, in this alternative world, Savile was never unmasked as a predator, but instead continued to be regarded as a hero by many, meaning that the 'Jimmys' are not following in the footsteps of a disgraced and evil man, but instead believe him to be a secular saint of sorts. That the audience knows differently is all part of the intrigue. As one commenter observed, 'I like the theory that they think Jim will fix it as per the TV show and save them from the infected.' What is the point of the Savile allusion? When the Jimmys appear, it's a deliberately shocking moment, both in terms of the violence and then the realisation that there might be worse things out there than the infected. This is something of a homage to the original 28 Days Later, when it becomes clear that Christopher Eccleston's demented army major and his men want to force female survivors of the infected into sexual slavery for their own perverse ends. Yet Boyle and Garland are both careful film-makers who would never include a detail as provocative as this simply to elicit a shocked reaction. Instead, Garland has argued that the ending is of a piece with the rest of the film's themes. He suggested that Savile was a 'trippy, f----- up kaleidoscope', which chimes with the film's similarly phantasmagorical evocation of Englishness, visual throwbacks to Olivier's Henry V and Agincourt included. Yet it's also because the Jimmy character – who has obviously been traumatised from a young age by seeing his friends and family torn to pieces by infected – has created his own version of reality from a mixture of half-remembered pop culture allusions, just as Alex in A Clockwork Orange is inspired in his ultraviolence by everything from Beethoven to Singin' in the Rain. 'The thing about looking back is how selective memory is,' Garland has said. 'It cherry picks and it has amnesia, and crucially, it also misremembers. We are living in a time right now which is absolutely dominated by a misremembered past.' Why is the ending so controversial? In the United States, where Savile is barely known, if at all, the ending has caused significant confusion and even disappointment amongst audiences, who have been mystified as to who these shell-suit wearing, blonde wigged antagonists are supposed to be. As one cinemagoer sighed on X, 'I personally don't appreciate having to do some homework to appreciate a sequence that's otherwise random to end a film.' It is also a (deliberately?) confusing aspect of the picture that the Aaron Taylor-Johnson character's name of 'Jamie' is close enough to 'Jimmy' for many viewers initially to believe that he is the grown-up version of the boy in the opening scene, safely escaped and now living in what seems to be comparative safety. The other argument against the ending, and what it sets up for the next film, is simply that the appropriation of Savile as a pop-cultural feature is inappropriate and tasteless. Certainly, the film's anti-Brexit subtext, suggesting that Britain is an isolated, backwards island that has been cut off from Europe by force, is unlikely to endear it to those who continue to think Brexit was a good and necessary idea. (Boyle and Garland are clearly not Brexiteers.) Hinting that this isolation has led to the creation of Savile cultists is a provocative and deeply controversial way to conclude the film. Finally, the jolt of black humour that comes moments after the deeply affecting conclusion of the storyline involving Spike's dying mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is an incongruous way to conclude the film that will be a true love-hate development. There will be those who believe that its kamikaze insanity ruins an otherwise thoughtful and serious film, and others who applaud its audacity. What does all this mean for the sequel? The choice of Candyman and the Marvels film-maker Nia DaCosta to direct the sequel, The Bone Temple – which has already been filmed and will be released in January – is an intriguing decision, given that DaCosta is a New York-raised American director who is tackling the follow-up to a film about Britain and Britishness. However, the idea that DaCosta will bring an outsider's eye to a film that Boyle has already teased is about 'the nature of evil' can only be a good thing. Just as Boyle brought his own inimitable perspective to the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (a film that, for understandable but regrettable reasons, he now claims he would not direct if he was offered the opportunity), so DaCosta has a chance to take the Savile-heavy mythology that The Bone Temple will inevitably be imbued with and make it not only comprehensible to American audiences but terrifying. Savile may be a British phenomenon but the traits that he embodied – the manipulation of power and what evil can be unchecked if those in positions of authority look the other way – are truly universal ones, and this brief tease should be a curtain-raiser for something extraordinarily dark and provocative, coming our way in a few months.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Story behind 28 Years Later's terrifying 'Boots' poem: How 110-year-old recording of Rudyard Kipling verses that scared viewers is used in US military training
When the first trailer for 28 Years Later was released last year, fans were immediately struck by the theme of sheer terror that ran through it. And part of what made it so scary was its use of a 1915 recording of one of Rudyard Kipling's lesser-known poems. The rendition of Boots by American actor Taylor Holmes sends a chill down the spine of anyone who listens to it - a fact that explains why it has featured for decades in the US Navy's training programme. Last week, it received more exposure with the release of Danny Boyle 's 28 Years Later. It reveals what has become of Britain nearly three decades on from the outbreak of the 'Rage Virus' first seen in 2002 film 28 Days Later. Holmes' Boots recording is played at the start of the film, when Jamie and his son Spike - played by Arron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams - arrive on mainland Britain after leaving the sanctuary of the virus-free island of Lindisfarne. Reflecting the repetitive actions and thoughts of a British soldier marching in South Africa during the Boer War, Kipling's poem was published in 1903 - the year after the conflict had ended. It builds from a calm, monotonous repetition of 'boot, boot, boot, boot', to a crescendo of screaming. The final verses include a plea to 'keep from goin' lunatic' and the poem ends with the words: 'There's no discharge in the war!' In full: Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Boots' We're foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin' over Africa Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin' over Africa -- (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) There's no discharge in the war! Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before -- (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) There's no discharge in the war! Don't—don't—don't—don't—look at what's in front of you. (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again); Men—men—men—men—men go mad with watchin' em, An' there's no discharge in the war! Count—count—count—count—the bullets in the bandoliers. If—your—eyes—drop—they will get atop o' you! (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again) -- There's no discharge in the war! We—can—stick—out—'unger, thirst, an' weariness, But—not—not—not—not the chronic sight of 'em, Boot—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again, An' there's no discharge in the war! 'Taint—so—bad—by—day because o' company, But night—brings—long—strings—o' forty thousand million Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again. There's no discharge in the war! I—'ave—marched—six—weeks in 'Ell an' certify It—is—not—fire—devils, dark, or anything, But boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again, An' there's no discharge in the war! Try—try—try—try—to think o' something different Oh—my—God—keep—me from goin' lunatic! (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again!) There's no discharge in the war! When Kipling wrote the poem, the loss of more than 20,000 British troops was still very fresh in the memory. The poem's precise metre - the first four words of each line are read at a rate of two per second - matched the time to which soldiers marched. American actor Holmes, who died in 1959, appeared in more than 100 Broadway plays. His delivery in the 1915 recording begins relatively measured, but then ramps up to wild, terrifying abandon. For decades, it has been used in the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) course. Recruits are subjected to it as part of efforts to put them under pressure. Former naval aviator Ward Carroll previously said: 'Anyone who has ever attended the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school will never forget the poem.' Holmes' rendition was also used last year in the marketing campaign for video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Fellow British poet T.S. Eliot chose to include Boots in his 1941 collection A Choice of Kipling's Verse. For every year from an initial holiday in 1898, Kipling visited South Africa. The author wrote several poems to support the British cause in the Boer War. Britain won the conflict but more than 20,000 British troops were killed. Kipling's most famous works include the Jungle Book and his Just So stories. His 1910 poem If— also remains hugely well-known. The author died in 1936 aged 70. He was left bereft after his son Jack was killed in the First World War. The first trailer for 28 Years Later was released last December. It sparked a flurry of publicity in large part because of the appearance of what appeared to be a zombified Cillian Murphy, who starred as lead character Jim in 28 Days Later. However, it later emerged that the figure was not Murphy but art dealer Angus Neill, who was given a part as an extra by Boyle after being talent-spotted. Murphy, 49, is though an executive producer on the new film and is set to star in upcoming sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. The Mail's Brian Viner gave the new film five stars in his review. He wrote: 'With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic survivalist horror-thriller film I have ever seen. 'Which sounds like limited praise, yet it's a much more crowded field than you might think. 'Boyle also made the 2002 film 28 Days Later, setting up the story (written by Garland) of a terrible virus rampaging through Britain, which in those days was more the stuff of science-fiction than it seems now. British troops seen aboard Cunard liner SS Catalonia as they arrive in South Africa during the Boer War, 1899 'There was a sequel, 28 Weeks Later (2007), but that had a different director and writer. 'Now, Boyle and Garland have reunited to mighty effect. 'There's no need to have seen the first two films – this one stands alone.' Boyle's original film famously showed Murphy's character walking through a deserted London after waking up from a coma in hospital. The director opened up earlier this month about how the scenes were shot. Admitting the crew did not have the money to be able to afford to formally close the road, he said that he instead enlisted his daughter to help. He told The Times: 'We didn't have the money to close the bridge, but had a plan to be there at 4am. 'The police can't ask the traffic to stop, but they will allow you to ask drivers. 'So we hired a lot of girls, including my own daughter, who was 18. 'Anybody driving at that time is a bloke, so we had the girls lean in, saying, "Do you mind?" And it worked fine.'
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
28 Years Later: political parallels, pregnant zombies and a peculiar ending
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have done it again. In the early 2000s, 28 Days Later became the most popular and influential zombie movie in decades, with its fast-moving, virally infected, not-quite-undead marauders rampaging through a post-apocalyptic England. Now Boyle and Garland have reunited with 28 Years Later, easily the most talked-about horror movie since Sinners, and the biggest zombie movie since the PG-13 dilutions of World War Z back in 2013. Compared with the countless familiar zombie movies and TV shows that have popped up since the original movie, 28 Years Later is a thorny, challenging, unpredictable work, which means there's plenty to discuss now that it's spent a well-attended weekend in wide release. Here are some major spoiler-heavy topics related to the film's style, themes, sociological implications and, of course, that ending. The original 28 Days Later is notable for its zombie efficiency. Rather than the slow shuffling and gradual, varying levels of undead decay often seen in zombie classics from George A Romero (and the many movies influenced by his films Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and so on), these zombies aren't technically zombies at all. They're victims of a lab-leaked 'rage' virus (with the hilariously dodgy origins of … showing monkeys violent news footage?!) that seems to be spread by virtually any exposure to an infected person's blood or saliva. Within a minute or two, the newly infected will be vomiting blood and attacking anyone around them in a deranged frenzy. The victims are analogous to zombies because of their seeming thirst for human carnage (though it's never clear whether they're truly 'feeding' on humans) and the mindlessness with which they pursue it, but they're a less supernatural variation than some of their ancestors. The same was true for the 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later. That's still the case in 28 Years Later, but with the passage of time built into the story, Boyle and Garland introduce new variants on the post-viral populace. There are still mobs of rage-virus victims, often in rags or no clothing at all, roaming the countryside, which remains confined to the United Kingdom. But 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) also encounter infected who have been grotesquely swollen by the virus, and now lurch belly-down around in the dirt, often subsisting on worms. On the other end of the spectrum, our heroes are also menaced by an 'alpha' zombie who is bigger, stronger and craftier than the others. He also seems capable of reproducing, and not just because of his, ah, endowments. Later in the film, Spike and his ill mother Isla (Jodie Comer) encounter a woman who is both infected and pregnant – and is even distracted enough by the imminent arrival of her baby to allow Isla to lend a helping hand in the birth. Perhaps most surprisingly, the baby is born healthy, seemingly not infected with the virus. (The idea of an asymptomatic carrier, as seen in 28 Weeks Later, goes unmentioned, but it's a fair bet that if the baby were infected, the humans who carry her around for the next day-plus would probably get sick at some point, too.) The movie's resident philosophical doctor-recluse Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) chalks this up to the miracles of the human placenta, which seems … oversimplified. But these zombie variants raise a lot of interesting questions. Are the alpha zombies evolving closer to what we think of as humanity, regaining some of their intelligence while maintaining a capacity for brutal violence? (He's seen multiple times pulling off heads in tandem with spines, like something out of a Predator movie.) It's vaguely implied that the alpha is the father to this newborn, suggesting that the zombies procreated post-infection, which is something these movies (or any movies? Surely there must be one with zombie sex, but it's not a typical feature of the genre) haven't shown before. Zombie reproductive rates must still be low; Dr Kelson points out that a human baby can't really survive for more than a few days without milk, and if infected women can still breastfeed at all, it's hard to imagine how that would work on a practical level, especially in terms of not spreading the virus. Maybe this baby, saved by Isla and Spike, is the first zombie-born human to survive. Thematically, the baby's arrival fits with the complication of the seemingly functional isolated community where Jamie and Isla have raised Spike. The baby, who Spike ultimately delivers back to the community before striking out on his own, implies that the world that they've understandably cut themselves off from nonetheless keeps turning, and may even produce new humans without the easiest and most comforting signs of renewal. Quite the opposite: the zombie variations give that outside world its own strange new shape, rather than showing the virus simply burning itself out in quarantine. Viewers will probably be split on whether dirt-crawlers or alphas are too cheesy, too reminiscent of other zombie pictures, too far afield from the relatively grounded viral origins of the first film. But in a movie that some audiences will probably also find short on traditional thrills, these elements keep the landscape strange and unpredictable. As a director, Boyle has long been known by a certain degree of flash; 28 Years Later evolves his style even further. The original film made innovative use of early digital video, which has held up remarkably well even as the tech itself has degraded; few movies have reproduced the grimy low-res immediacy that sometimes smears into a kind of poetic abstraction. For the sequel, Boyle and returning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle haven't reproduced this look, either. Instead, they've updated it, using inventive multi-iPhone rigs to capture similarly bracing images. Boyle and Mantle use this technology to shoot from Boyle's trademark extreme angles and unexpected vantages, add micro-freeze-frames to scenes of particularly tense action, and deftly utilize real locations, adding up to one the most distinctive-looking movies of the year and a major triumph for Mantle. For all of its wild swings, his work never feels overloaded or sensationalized. Instead, the visuals guide the audience through a series of expectations-bending shifts, including passages where the movie feels more akin to a dark fairytale (with the alpha looming in shadow on the horizon) than a traditional horror picture. As with 28 Days Later, it's easy to see how other film-makers might imitate some of these techniques on a superficial level. It's also hard to picture others bringing them together with such virtuosity. Digital cinematography is now the norm; Boyle belongs with Michael Mann, Steven Soderbergh and David Fincher as some of the few mainstream directors who are able to embrace its differences from celluloid, rather than trying to hide them. Somewhat more time has passed in the world of the movie than in our world; technically, they're five years further into the future than we are. In terms of release dates, the movies have taken us from an immediately post-9/11 world to one that still bears the scars and hears the echoes of the Covid pandemic, a rise of authoritarianism, and countless post-9/11 armed conflicts, including one unfolding in the Middle East right now. Boyle has specifically mentioned Brexit as a touchpoint in the development of 28 Years Later, which indeed sees Britain isolated – by force, rather than by choice – and festering. Though the movie doesn't underline any Covid parallels too boldly, it could be ready as a post-pandemic allegory, with Spike's desire to rejoin the world, regardless of how it's been altered from what his parents knew, conflicting with the strictness of the community he was born into – essentially a quarantine within a quarantine. Dr Kelson, in the meantime, is determined to memorialize the dead with his towering bone temple of skulls, rather than using his resources to move on or fortify his defenses (which also sets our sympathies apart from outright Covid denialism or the anti-vaccine crowd). It might be surprising for a sequel to a movie that came out in the shadow of 9/11 to traffic in messaging that could amount to 'never forget', but Boyle and Garland turn that mantra around to grapple with how we, as the collective human race, are expected to proceed as survivors of so many contemporary disasters. How many of those disasters came to pass in the rest of the world, which we're told has been cleared of the rage virus, is another one of the movie's enticing open questions. On paper, 28 Years Later ends on an infuriating sequel tease that leaves the movie largely unresolved. The reality is a bit more complicated than that. The film actually reaches a highly satisfying, if thoughtfully elegiac and open-ended, conclusion. After Dr Kelson makes an approximate diagnosis of terminal cancer for Isla, she asks him to be euthanized, and her son places her newly polished skull at the top of Kelson's monument. Eventually, Spike returns to his island community alone – but only long enough to drop off the infant and a note for his father. He then heads back out into the unknown, alone. This both continues the coming-of-age thread at the beginning of the film, when Spike makes his first trip to the infected-heavy mainland with his father, and rejects it, via Spike not just dabbling in zombieland for some real-life target practice, but deciding to actually explore the country at length. He has prioritized a less regimented, prescribed life over the ritual and safety that he's known, having accepted (at least to some degree) the role of death in life itself, through the loss of his mother. Then a bunch of chavs called Jimmy show up. The final scene of 28 Years Later actually picks up from its opening, set during the original rage outbreak, where a young lad named Jimmy escapes the zombies as his vicar father welcomes them, seeing the hordes as a harbinger of end times. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Jamie is close enough to a homophone of 'Jimmy' to maybe mistake him as the grownup version of that survivor, but no: an adult version of the real and now tracksuited Jimmy (Jack O'Connell, who also played an interloper in Sinners) pops up to save Spike from another group of zombies. He's commanding a mini-army of imitators and seeming acolytes who gleefully, athletically dispatch the infected as if they've just run in from a Guy Ritchie movie. Then the movie ends, not exactly on a cliffhanger, but leaving the audience hanging on what's next for Spike and the Jimmys. This also involves a cultural touchstone most American audiences will miss, making the whole thing seem even more inexplicable: Jimmy and his gang are dressed like Jimmy Savile, a once-ubiquitous British TV presenter posthumously accused of widespread sexual abuse, including of children. Jimmy Savile died in 2011 and the allegations against him became well-known afterward, which means this Jimmy wouldn't be aware of his namesake's crimes. In the world of 28 Years Later, there's a good chance they never came to light at all. But for 2025 viewers (at least those aware of Savile), the surface goofiness of this sequence gives way to discomfort, and more thoughts about what gets preserved in a fallen world. Is this apparent religious cult formed around the image of a Top of the Pops host a grim joke on the accidental whitewashings of history, or are there more sinister parallels to be mined? Alongside that question, there's also some bonus confusion: the lead character of 28 Days Later, played by Cillian Murphy and unaccounted for in this film (and supposedly a lead in the as-yet-unfunded third film) is also named Jim. Well, Guy Ritchie hasn't directed 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – and neither has Boyle. Nia DaCosta, who made the 2021 Candyman reboot as well as The Marvels and Little Woods, directed the already-filmed Garland-penned sequel, which is supposedly out in January (though sometimes ultra-short-gap sequels wind up pushed around the schedule, fearful of going out too soon). Its subtitle refers to something that's already been unveiled: Dr Kelson's monument, which the movie seems to have left behind as Spike makes his way in the world. The second film could well circle back to follow Dr Kelson, and leave the Jimmys for whatever Garland and Boyle have planned for the third movie with Murphy; that would certainly fit the new movie's repeated narrative swerves refocusing the who/what/where/when of survival. But Boyle and Garland have said that the Jimmys sequence does set up the second movie, and that Murphy will appear in a similar capacity to set up the third, so it's fair to assume Spike will remain the lead character for that installment. (This would make him, and whoever joins him, the first 28 Days Later series character to really carry over, as Days, Weeks and Years all followed different groups of people.) Maybe the Bone Temple is more of a symbolic reference than a literal one, referring to how Spike carries awareness of the dead with him on his journey, which seems like a pointed contrast to the uniform joviality of the Jimmys. One thing is clear: Boyle and Garland have set up a sequel not by obviously holding over-many characters and stories back for another movie, but by overflowing this post-apocalyptic world with ideas.
