28 Years Later crew explain how Alpha chase was filmed and it was more “terrifying” on set

The Alpha chase is one of the scariest (and best) scenes in 28 Years Later – and it was shot in an ex-vaccination center.

In the movie, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams) make it back to the causeway in relatively low tide and trek through the water back to Holy Island.

However, the Alpha – a new super-infected – sees them from afar, and it’s not long before he’s chasing them along the path, inching closer with every stride as they desperately sprint toward the gates.

It is incredibly intense, and for the cinematographer, it was just as “terrifying” filming it as it was watching it.

How 28 Years Later DP filmed that incredible Alpha chase

Anthony Dod Mantle, the movie’s cinematographer, explained to Variety how they ended up filming the scene in a former vaccination center in the UK. “It was a gigantic hall,” he said, and they built the causeway inside it.

“[We] filled it up with water and it was temperature controlled. We built this whole set, which was 450 feet long with the gate in the middle, and we had to light it.”

To create the scene’s unique visual backdrop, Dod Mantle used plates from an astronomy center to replicate a pollution-free sky. “We assume, to a certain extent, that 28 years later, there will be no pollution, no cars, no interference,” he said. “So we have this premise that the air is clean.”

The chase itself was shot at speed, using dual dollies, technocranes, and a custom-built “bar cam” rig — an array of iPhones mounted around Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s head. “It’s pretty scary. But we did it,” Dod Mantle said.

While describing the scene as “blissful”, he also said it’s “oddly sublime, melancholic, beautiful, and yet terrifying.”

“I really like the ambiguity and the polarization of beauty, melancholy, or whatever you want, fear, and the genre of horror,” he continued.

“I was more terrified than I thought I was going to be on the causeway, because when [the Alpha] was pounding down behind me and pounding towards us, it was pretty terrifying and the use of sound, and the way we shot it and lit it was terrifying.”