28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Is Brutal and Bleak
Nia DaCosta pushes the rage-virus sequel into punishing new territory, descending even deeper into dystopian horror.
Fresh off directing the scintillating period drama Hedda, Nia DaCosta shows impressive range and artistic ambition helming horror sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Differing significantly in tone and genre, and utterly in design, the two films exist worlds apart, with respective protagonists who hardly could live in more disparate circumstances.
The Bone Temple continues the journey of plucky 12-year-old Spike, introduced in 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 2025 reboot of the post-apocalyptic rage-virus film series they started 24 years ago.
Spike (the estimable Alfie Williams) had decided to go it alone in the brutal hellscape of the British mainland. Quarantined from the world, the land’s been overrun for years by flesh-eating, virus-infected, formerly normal humans.
Yet the lad chose to cut himself off from the safety of the only community he knew, inside the fortified island village where he grew up. On the mainland, he’s found himself another community, whether he likes it or not, in a gang of vicious human marauders led by survivor and psychopath Sir Jimmy Crystal.
Add Sir Jimmy to Jack O’Connell’s devilishly good run of big screen villains, following his scene-stealing Sinners vamp Remmick, and charismatic turn as Amy Winehouse’s “Blake incarcerated” in the otherwise lackluster biopic Back to Black.
Sir Jimmy isn’t just a strung-out bad boy — he’s the unhinged product of an orphaned childhood in a living hell, and he wields a powerful magnetism over his flock of similarly stunted followers. All the members of his so-called Finger Gang bear his name — as in Jimmy Jimmy (Robert Rhodes), Jimmy Snake (Ghazi Al Ruffai), Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), and Jimmima (Emma Laird) — and they gleefully do his evil bidding.
The film, written by Garland, goes to excruciating lengths to depict their depraved devotion to Sir Jimmy. He often demands blood and flesh “charity” to appease their god, “Old Nick,” resulting in scenes of gruesome violence and inhuman cruelty dealt with taunts and giggles.
DaCosta and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (Hedda, The Marvels) concoct stunning, fiery tableaux you’ll nevertheless want to shield your eyes from. One disturbing sequence of torture — an intense, gory escalation of Last House on the Left-style lunatic mayhem — might be a red line for many viewers. It nearly was for me. Will it be the red line for still-impressionable Spike?
The kid’s innocence is lost, but can his humanity survive this environment? A question for his times and ours. Humanity has deserted most of the humans he encounters. They’ve seen too much and done too much. From the downfall of society and devastating isolation, fear and anarchy have become order.
This deeper descent into madness might be too bleak were there not the shred of hope provided by a parallel plot-line following Ralph Fiennes’ endearingly eccentric Dr. Kelson, introduced in the previous film.
The one seemingly benevolent soul Spike has met out here in the wasteland, Kelson spends the film customarily devoted to his life’s work, memorializing the countless dead by adding their remains to his towering bone temple. He’s still fending off the raging alpha infected Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), using pharmaceutical methods to soothe the savage beast.
Might he find a trace of humanity left in Samson? An entertaining Fiennes and the prosthetic-suited, former MMA pro Lewis-Parry make it worth watching the doctor try his best. Fiennes squeezes every ounce of compassion, pathos, and humor from his screen time, as Kelson occasionally blows off steam dancing around his bunker to Duran Duran records.
Fiennes and the film hit their peak with a bravura scene of Kelson in his bone temple performing a ritual dance that elicited enthusiastic applause from the audience at the promo screening I attended. The crowd burst into applause once more during the film, which should bode well for those hoping not only for humanity, but for another, final entry in the 28 Years Later trilogy, as planned by its creators.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (★★★☆☆) is rated R and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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