28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

A direct sequel to 2024’s 28 Years Later, this new instalment from director Nia DaCosta finds teen survivor Spike (Alfie Allen) running from the “Infected” but landing in the jaws of the “Jimmies,” a murderous cult of brainwashed youths led by the psychopathic Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). Meanwhile, the eccentric Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) continues building memorials of the dead with their bones while also trying to find humanity in the undead creature he calls “Samson” (Chi Lewis-Parry).

Zombie franchise humanizes the “Infected” with a focus on tender drama rather than over-the-top kills. A few years ago, when the pandemic forced us into the confines of our home, it made sense to revisit 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle’s seminal 2002 horror offered us Cillian Murphy running across an abandoned London, John Murphy’s hauntingly deafening theme, and worst of all, “running zombies”. More than two decades later, the franchise continued with Boyle returning to direct 28 Years Later, a chapter that took the paranoia from zombified cities to forests and islands inhabited by a new generation of survivors. What works in this saga’s favor over all those years is its constant pursuit of evolution; zombie hordes or of human societies. But as Boyle passes the directing baton to Nia DaCosta (who brilliantly rebooted the cult horror Candyman in 2021), the franchise takes a new turn. Yes, the “Infected” are all the more terrifying in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, complete with their guttural screams and bloodshot eyes. But thanks to a surprisingly tender non-verbal turn by ex-MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry, the franchise’s zombies awaken a humanity that’s hardly touched upon by gory, shaky-cam entries to this genre. Returning as screenwriter, Alex Garland taps into the memories of the franchise’s alpha zombie “Samson”. Befriending Fiennes’s iodine-drenched bald shaman Kelson, Lewis-Parry’s 6-foot-8 hunk is more than just a growling beast. Memories of his human past and Kelson’s stash of pharmaceuticals help him tap into a gentleness that he thought was dormant in his naked, infected body. As the two try to make contact without words and bond over some upbeat Duran Duran tracks, The Bone Temple injects a surprising sense of hope into this otherwise grim and isolated world.

An atmospheric survival tale with lesser stakes but enough scares. Away from Samson and Kelson’s bizarre tete-a-tetes, our teen hero Spike is being tormented by the tracksuit-donning gang of cult killers. It’s fairly standard serial killing stuff, completed with ritualistic murders and acts of anarchic sadism. But when the deranged baddie in your film is as terrific as Jack O’Connell, the cliches also become tempting to bite into. Fresh off playing the magnetic vampire Remmick in Sinners, the Irish actor is flamboyantly wicked with his Jimmy Saville-inspired hairdo, flashy bling, and that icky grin. In seeking terror from a human freak like Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal and tapping into the humanity of ill-fated “former humans” like Samson, Nia Da Costa adds some much-needed peace to this otherwise chaotic, on-the-run franchise. True to previous entries, the film does make space for some frantic camera movements to track down zombies stealthily popping out of bushes or zooming in on dishevelled, bloodied faces from the most unappealing of angles. Towards the third act, Fiennes even delivers such an unhinged act soundtracked to Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” that you can’t help but gape in fear and awe. But the true impact of The Bone Temple lies in its ability to pause and reflect. Think of the previous films as the initial waves of the epidemic, characterised by foot-thumping chaos and bloodshedding, flesh-chewing destruction. The latest instalment digs deeper into the eerie calm “after” the storm, when all that is left are Kelson’s never-ending stacks of skulls and bones. When the death count can be measured in pyramids and ziggurats, where do we go from there? Do we keep on hiding in the forests from the cannibals? Do we reach a truce with them? Or do we one-up them with our own primal evil? Even with all its gruesome body horror, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a zombie flick that scares you as much as it compels you to think.