The Number of the Beast lights up an unforgettable scene in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple thanks to director Nia DaCosta expertly blending ‘craziness and romance’
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here were laughs of surprise around me in screen three of the Everyman in Muswell Hill, north London, as 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple drew to its conclusion. Without giving too much away for those who haven’t seen it, Ralph Fiennes dancing semi-naked among piles of human bones to Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast is not how you expect one of our greatest thespians to deport himself on screen.
“Alex Garland chose that song,” says the film’s director, Nia DaCosta. “He wrote it into the script. And you can’t get better than that in a film about satanists.”
Indeed you can’t. From the track’s spoken intro by actor Barry Clayton – “Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number. Its number is six hundred and sixty six” – to Bruce Dickinson concluding with “I have the fire, I have the force / I have the power to make my evil take its course”, it is a shade under five minutes of nothing but the dark lord.
