The ending to Danny Boyle’s much-awaited 28 Years Later has shocked and divided fans – not least due to its use of the image of Jimmy Savile in its depiction of evil.

In 2012, Jimmy Savile was posthumously exposed as a prolific sexual abuser. His likeness has been used in 28 Years Later – in the very final two minutes of the film where Jack O’Connell’s character, named Sir Jimmy Crystal, has been revealed as a cult leader of a gang called ‘The Jimmies’, who are all rather shockingly dressed up as Jimmy Savile. It should also be stated that in this film’s timeline, Savile’s crimes had not been exposed.

Starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later takes us back to the world of previous movies 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, which sees a rage virus run rampant. The latest chapter sees a group of survivors who have built a community on a small island. Boyle shot with 20 iPhones, and above all wanted to explore what humanity looks like today through a horror prism.

Taylor-Johnson and Comer play parents to a young boy named Spike, who is curious about the infected ‘zombie’ characters in a way that his parents are not. At the end of the film, we see Spike is saved by O’Connell’s character Jimmy, with the gang taking him under his wing. The Skins star has already made his mark on the horror genre this year playing a vampire in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, starring alongside Michael B Jordan.

The ending has shocked audiences, with one fan posting: ‘Sort of appreciate that 28 Years Later, an excellent film, ends on a note so weird it threatens to tank the whole thing lol.’ Another has described it as a ‘genius representation of innocence being destroyed’.

When images of actors dressed as Savile were leaked online before the film dropped (and context was clearer) critics felt uncomfortable at the idea of zombies dressed up as the disgraced abuser.

One critic told The Sun at the time: “When we realised the hoard of zombies were dressed as Jimmy Savile we were shocked. It’s at best eyebrow-raising and at worst stomach-churning.”

Boyle agrees about the ‘shocking’ nature of the ending, and explains that the Jimmies gang will play a key part of the second film in what will be a 28 Years Later trilogy.

‘It is shocking. It returns you to the fact this is a horror film but not in a way you might be expecting,’ he said in an interview with BAFTA. ‘They go on to dominate the second film… I thought “This is the most original piece of writing I’ve seen since Clockwork Orange.”’

The scripts for 28 Years Later and sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple were both written by The Beach writer Alex Garland. The sequel will be directed by Candyman’s Nia DaCosta with Boyle continuing to be involved with the project.

Boyle has also revealed that, while 28 Years Later focuses on the nature of family, the sequel will focus on ‘the nature of evil’, with the Jimmies playing a huge part. When it comes to the use of Jimmy Savile imagery, Boyle explained his thinking in an interview with Business Insider: ‘He’s as much to do with pop culture as he is to do with sportswear, to do with cricket, to do with the honours system,’ he said. ‘It’s all kind of twisting in this partial remembrance, clinging onto things and then recreating them as an image for followers.’

Garland has also weighed in on his intentions when it came to the film’s ending. ‘The thing about looking back is how selective memory is,’ he 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.’

Boyle has also expanded on his plans for O’Connell’s character and how his story fits into the wider 28 Years timeline and narrative. ‘The role of Jack O’Connell’s character and his family, which is a replacement, really, for the family he loses at the beginning of the film, is to reintroduce evil into what has become a compassionate environment,’ Boyle explained in an interview with The Independent, opening up further about what the rest of the trilogy will look like.

‘I asked Alex [Garland, writer] right at the beginning to just tell me what’s the nature of each of the films, and he said that the nature of the first film is about family. The second film is about the nature of evil. And you’re about to meet a lot more of them when it’ll be more appropriate to talk about them in the second film.’
O’Connell’s Jimmy – who is the young child whose family are killed by the infected in the opening scene of 28 Years Later – will be a main character in the sequel, […] which is also set to reintroduce Cillian Murphy’s character Jim, the protagonist from 28 Days Later.