Sony PicturesFor the most part, The Bone Temple is a much more lighthearted movie than its predecessor, 28 Years Later. It’s largely a hangout movie between the good Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and the Alpha Infected he’s dubbed “Samson” (Chi Lewis-Parry). But one scene tips The Bone Temple over into a realm of brutality that no other movie in the 28 Days franchise has even touched. It’s a scene that tests 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’s R-rating and tips the film briefly over into the splatter movie genre. And remarkably, it’s the one scene that doesn’t have any Infected in it.Director Nia DaCosta was keenly aware that this was a sequence that could make or break the movie — and more likely break its audience. So she treaded carefully when it came to how gruesome she could go, but acknowledges that it was “tough.” Warning! Spoilers ahead for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.“Shirts Off”Nia DaCosta and Jack O'Connell on the set of The Bone Temple. | Sony PicturesToward the latter half of The Bone Temple, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) and his “Fingers” have forced their way into a farm and taken the family living there hostage. After toying with their emotions, they round their hostages up into a barn and string them up. That’s where Sir Lord Jimmy gives the horrifying order: “Take their shirts off.”The Fingers spend the next few hours skinning the hostages, some with their bare hands, others with knives or blunt instruments. It’s a harrowing, grisly sequence that shows some of its gore onscreen, but sometimes cuts away from the bloodshed to show Spike (Alfie Williams) fleeing outside to vomit, with only the screams of the victims hinting at the horrors happening indoors. But it shows just enough gore to make one’s stomach churn — something that DaCosta says she was very careful about.“With that sequence that we really had to figure out because the point is the brutality, seeing the horrifying choices,” DaCosta tells Inverse. “Because you have to balance as much beauty as there is in Kelson and Samson's story, you have to find the equal brutality. Because I think the point is sort of how hard it is to hold onto hope because of how horrible the world is.”But even on the page (written by Alex Garland), DaCosta says the scene was hard to stomach. “People were like, ‘Damn.’ Because it's people being skinned. It's different if you're shooting someone, or stabbing them, or even beheading them, frankly. Skinning is torture.”But that’s why it was important for DaCosta to find the threshold — a lesson she learned while making her 2021 horror film Candyman. “With skinning, you can pull all the way away, but just the idea of the thing that's happening and seeing them in the background is really impactful,” she says. “So we had to just keep modulating, we had to keep editing, we had to keep figuring out like, ‘OK, we want this impact here, but we also want to make sure we're not reveling in it.’” That’s why she depicted the skinning take a toll on even the Fingers, who are doling out the punishment. “This shot's so disgusting, but after the skin hits the floor, you Jimmy Jones [played by Maura Bird] in another space, and tapping their head, and then you see another one sort of affected by it,” DaCosta says. “You're like, ‘Oh right. This isn't natural to them, actually, but they've kind of mortgaged their humanity because it makes them feel safe in this cult that they're in.’”That was the “balance that I tried to thread, but it is tough. It's tough,” she says.The Jimmy Savile Of It AllJimmy and his Fingers. | Sony PicturesLayered with the imagery of skin flopping on the floor and guts hanging out was the images of children clad in tracksuits and raggedy blonde wigs — costumes that mimic the signature look of Jimmy Savile, a beloved figure of children’s TV who was revealed to be an abuser after his passing in 2011. But time froze in 2002 in the world of 28 Years Later, and the irony escapes Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal and his followers (who are also all named Jimmy in his cult).Savile’s downfall was widely known in the U.K., but less so in the States. DaCosta knows that as an American, it might have seemed strange for her to helm this film, which centers so heavily around the “Jimmys.” But DaCosta grew up “on and off” in the U.K., which she says gave her a “unique” perspective she found helpful. “I happened to be living in the U.K. at the time when all the horrors came out about that person's life and choices. So I understood that, but it’s a part of a bigger thing that we're doing, which is like the corruption of childhood,” DaCosta says.“So it's interesting, being American, but telling this very British story. But because of my knowledge, and my experience, and my family, I felt closer to it,” she concludes.28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is playing in theaters now.