Imagine twenty iPhone 15 Pro Maxes locked and loaded, spinning around a single point like a swarm of mechanical fireflies. That’s not some guerrilla marketing stunt—it’s exactly how Danny Boyle and his team captured some of the most thrilling moments in 28 Years Later, the long-awaited sequel to the 2002 cult classic 28 Days Later. In a recent conversation with IGN, Boyle revealed how he and writer Alex Garland sought to re-create that raw, anything-goes feeling of the original film—only this time using devices that fit in your pocket.

Back in 2002, Boyle and Oscar-winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle shot 28 Days Later on relatively inexpensive digital video cameras, giving the movie a scrappy, handheld look that set it apart from big-­budget horrors. The homemade aesthetic wasn’t just an artistic choice; it was a narrative one. “Home video cameras were everywhere then,” Boyle explained, “so if an apocalypse hit, people would be grabbing their camcorders to film it.” Fast forward to the mid-’20s, and home video has all but vanished—replaced by smartphones capable of shooting in 4K. When Boyle decided to revisit the “rage virus” universe 23 years later, he saw an opportunity: why not lean into the democratization of high-­quality cameras and use iPhones?

Pulling off a feature-­length film shot primarily on iPhones isn’t as simple as handing an actor a loaded phone and yelling “Action!” The 28 Years Later crew relied on three custom-­built iPhone rigs: one holding eight phones, another holding ten, and a “wild child” that held twenty. Boyle likened that 20-phone contraption to “a poor man’s bullet time,” referencing the famed slo-­mo effect from The Matrix where Neo dodges bullets while the world appears to stand still. The 20-phone rig can be mounted to cranes or dollies, creating a 180-degree field of view around the action. In post, the editors can flip instantly between angles, slice together that signature frozen-moment effect, or even jump backward and forward in time to heighten suspense.

Boyle admits that the 20-camera shot is a standout in the film’s second half. Though he’s normally tight-­lipped about spoiling key visual moments, he teased that “you’ll know it when you see it”—a hint that the sequence will stand among 28 Years Later’s most jaw-­­dropping. The goal wasn’t just to marvel at fancy tech; it was to plunge the audience into the heart of the chaos. “For a moment, the audience is inside the scene, inside the action, rather than classically observing a picture,” Boyle said. That immersion helps drive home the brutality and panic of a world overrun by the “rage” virus.

Of course, shooting a mainstream, $75 million film entirely on iPhones raises practical questions. How do you ensure consistent exposure, stabilize shaky handheld footage, or deal with battery life? The answer lay in a collaboration with Apple and a collection of custom accessories: aluminum cages housing each phone, specialized lenses to mimic cinematic depth-of-field, and external power packs to keep the 15 Pro Maxes juiced up on lengthy takes. Boyle’s longtime cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, returned to oversee the look. He balanced the “grainy, will-age quicker than milk” aesthetic popularized in 28 Days Later with the ultra-clean sensor of a modern iPhone.

Beyond the iPhone rigs, the filmmakers peppered the shoot with other unconventional camera mounts to achieve a frenetic, close-up feel. They strapped cameras to drones swooping over desolate landscapes and even rigged action cams onto actors’ bodies to capture disorienting first-person perspectives. In one sequence, they attached cameras to farm animals—yes, farm animals—to lend an unpredictable, almost absurd angle to a chase through the English countryside. “You can’t tell what’s coming from the side until it’s right on you,” Boyle noted, underscoring how these techniques feed into the film’s pervasive feeling of unease.

All these experiments feed into a broader design choice: 28 Years Later is presented in a 2.76:1 widescreen aspect ratio. That ultra-wide frame forces viewers to scan left and right, never letting them settle. It’s hard to ignore lurking threats hiding at the edges, much like someone glancing nervously at every side-mirror in a threatening wilderness. Boyle revealed that the choice of 2.76:1 was deliberate—to amplify the anxiety that your next danger could come from any direction. It’s a modern twist on the original movie’s more cramped framing, where Mutant Infected could appear out of nowhere in a narrow hospital corridor.

The decision to shoot on iPhones also offers a thematic echo of the original. Back in 2002, the Canon XL-1 camcorder’s grainy digital look peeled back the sheen of Hollywood gloss, making the horror feel raw and immediate. Now, in 2024, smartphones have that same instant authenticity—plus the benefit of millions of users testing camera features long before they hit a film set. “We wanted to evoke the same scrappy verisimilitude,” Boyle said. “But this time with tools most of us carry in our pockets. There’s a poetry to that—how far we’ve come in twenty-three years.”

Of course, 28 Years Later isn’t just a tech demo. The film, starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes, follows a group of survivors who have lived in isolation on Lindisfarne Island for nearly three decades—untouched by the virus. They return to a mainland Britain that’s collapsed into dystopian chaos. While many assumed cumbersomely large film cameras would be back—IMAX-style—Boyle doubled down on the intrusiveness of small-format shooting. He wanted viewers to feel like they were watching something scavenged from the wreckage, exactly like the original, only with a hyper-modern twist.

Even as 28 Years Later hits theaters on June 20, 2025, its technical bravado will sting like fresh gasoline. By using up to twenty iPhones in a single shot, Boyle is not just chasing a new gimmick; he’s leaning into the idea that apocalypse imagery should look uncannily close to what you or I might grab in a terror-filled rush. The result is a film that feels both groundbreaking and familiar—equal parts homage to the scrappy digital punk of 28 Days Later and a statement on how profoundly our tools for storytelling have evolved.