’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ Carves Itself a Niche

Stomach-heaving atrocities pepper 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the mournfully graphic fourth installment in the three-decade-long 28 Days Later horror franchise and an immediate sequel to last year’s 28 Years Later. Prepare to flinch at the sight of hog-tied victims flayed alive and dry-gag at a bulging-eyed behemoth stuffing his face with human brains freshly scooped out of a skull. Lesser stewards of this pitch-black plague parable could easily have let the film coast on scene after scene of such graphic torture-porn deprivation. But what’s so shocking is, against all odds, the movie reveals itself to be unexpectedly original.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Nia DaCosta
Written by: Alex Garland
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry
Running time: 109 mins

In an age of sequelitis and cookie-cutter IP regurgitation, returning screenwriter Alex Garland has concocted a new entry that, in its own minor way, enriches the ferociously re-energized series left so dormant in the 18 years between the second and third films. Director Nia DaCosta does a yeoman’s job helming this middle installment (sandwiched between O.G. series co-creator Danny Boyle’s kinetic predecessor and his in-production finale), an assignment executed with such unaffected acumen that it feels more like a polished but detached babysitting gig. Without Anthony Dob Mantle’s dazzlingly inventive camerawork and Boyle’s preferred hopped-up editing style, The Bone Temple feels almost sedate — which is disappointing for such a visually stylish series, although kind of apt for a movie whose plot hinges on a tranquilizer dart.

Administering that projectile is Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a former NHS staffer and elegiac hermit living among the bones of the dead with his Duran Duran vinyl while covered with orange-tinted, virus-resistant iodine. He’s made a habit of shooting the blow dart into wild-eyed Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the Brobdingnagian head of the local Alphas who suffer from the Rage Virus but show more intelligence than the typical infected.

The darts, dipped in a sedative cocktail of morphine and xylazine, neutralize Samson, who oddly keeps returning to Kelson for more of the medicine. Another hit of the sweet stuff softens his bulging eyeballs and offers succor to his violently clouded mind. “Nothing wrong with peace and respite,” coos Kelson, who himself dabs a bit of the opiate on his tongue and enjoys blissed-out moments of zen sitting alongside the stoned Samson before dancing with him to the warbled sounds of “Rio.”

Deeply empathetic and still viewing the infected not as monsters but as patients in need of care, Kelson sees hope in Samson’s reactions to the sedative, and wonders if he can more acutely diagnose and even treat Samson’s destructive illness — one that might not just be physical but also psychological, and treated as such.

Still infecting the area, though, are a truly psychotic band of otherwise disease-free marauders, the self-proclaimed Jimmys who all wear track suits and long blonde wigs, with upside-down crosses etches into their foreheads. Their leader is Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), whose unexpected cameo at the end of the last film teed up all the mayhem in this one. A preacher’s son who, at the tender age of 8, watched as the rage virus destroyed his friends, family, and community, Sir Lord Jimmy is convinced that his devout father was actually Satan, whom he nicknamed Old Nick; and he himself is therefore the antichrist.

A spellbinding orator with a soft but confident Scottish brogue, Sir Lord Jimmy and his septet of cult-like disciples — his “seven fingers” — roam around the land, making quick work of any rampaging undead and otherwise terrorizing the uninfected with horrific acts of deadly violence. “Our charity,” he calls it, like skinning their chests in what he calls “the removal of the shirt.” It’s enough to make the newest Jimmy, a runaway tweener from the last movie named Spike (Alfie Williams), puke his guts out. And skeptical Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), sympathetic to Spike’s weaker disposition, acts as his surrogate big sister just as she begins to question Sir Lord Jimmy and “all this zombie shite.”

Inevitably the Jimmys cross paths with Kelson and his impressive ossuary (the titular bone temple), prompting him to make a secret devil’s bargain with Sir Lord Jimmy and cosplay as Lucifer. The resulting infernal encounter, which the good doctor choreographs to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast,” is a stunner of a sequence, a fire-and-brimstone conjuring of febrile insanity that further cements Fiennes’ already majestic reputation as one of our greatest and most willingly gonzo actors.

Aside from a hell of a climax, The Bone Temple comes off as small compared to 28 Years Later. It’s a grisly anecdote, not an epic. There’s less world-building, fewer startling revelations about a society gone sideways, and only a handful of characters instead of a sprawling cast. The film plays more like a bonus chapter, a way of wrapping up loose ends from the last film before heading into a big finish. Despite its rich insights, the story is less than essential. But, while the narrative doesn’t really move forward, it’s still a pleasure to go a bit deeper.

Every encounter in The Bone Temple is an exploration of trauma, the fundamental challenge of living through a relentlessly dead world with no sense of abatement. When, in a more reflective moment, Sir Lord Jimmy asks Kelson what it was like in the before times, he replies with quiet disquiet. “There was a sense of certainty,” Kelson explains. “An order. The foundations — they seemed unshakable.” Those were the days.

At the very end, a familiar face from the first film — and clearly the redux protagonist for the series’ next and last chapter — tutors a young girl on the victories of the twentieth century. “Fascism, nationalism, populism — totally dismantled,” he says. “Never to be again.” How quaint that, in a universe where modern UK politics effectively ended in 2002, rage-infected humans were the sole threat to civilization.

With a fifth film planned to conclude the 28 Days Later quintology, Garland’s nested next-gen 28 Years Later trilogy is developing into that rare cinematic experience: a genre flex that, despite splurging on the gross-out quotient, remains thoughtful, absorbing, political, spiritual and philosophical. Everything you want from a modern myth: dystopic warnings for dystopic times.