28 Years Later: The Bone Temple brings catharsis, pain, and brains

4 hours ago

Abby Olcese,

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. // Courtesy Sony Pictures

In a way, the reboot of the 28 Days Later films couldn’t have happened at a more timely moment. The first film dropped in 2002 squarely between the 9/11 terror attacks and the start of the Iraq war a year later. 28 Years Later released just last year amid tensions following the 2024 election and ongoing (insane) debates between the roles of faith and science in public life and public policy.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is out this week, smack in the center of…well, you’ve seen the news. Suffice it to say that a franchise ostensibly about a society-destroying zombie rage virus but is actually about the evil we do to each other remains, uh, pertinent.

Nia DaCosta’s turn in the director’s chair proves an effective one. Bone Temple is both nastier and ickier than anything the franchise has delivered so far (if you’ve been wishing the series featured more flaying…congratulations, I guess) and funnier. It’s a memorable examination of both our capacity for brutality and kindness.

We pick up where 28 Years Later left off, with young Spike (Alfie Williams) in the clutches of the Jimmys, a gang of Satan-worshipping weirdos who dress like British media personality/sexual predator Jimmy Savile and roam around the countryside committing acts of heinous violence. Spike is initiated against his will into the group by charismatic psycho leader Lord Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), kicking off a series of traumatic experiences as our impressionable young hero tries to escape a cult he wants to part in.

Simultaneously, we’re reintroduced to Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) the physician who’s built an impressive skeletal monument to the dead. During an encounter with alpha infected Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), Kelson shoots the behemoth rage zombie with a morphine-filled blow dart. The result — Samson calms down and seems almost content — makes Kelson suspect there may be a cure for the rage virus.

These two stories circle around each other until coming together in a cataclysmic climax. While the Jimmys storyline is deeply violent and troubling, it’s not without its A Clockwork Orange-esque moments of black humor. O’Connell, as demonstrated in Sinners, is fantastic at balancing malevolence with disarming charm. Fiennes’ turn as Kelson offers a different perspective on the character we met in 28 Years Later, and his interactions with Lewis-Parry’s Samson become funnier as the two develop a relationship. The image of the iodine-soaked doctor and the rage-infected zombie, both zonked on morphine and staring at the sky, is a juxtaposition for the ages.

Call it 28 Trains Later.

There’s been much to consider thematically about this new trilogy, from navigating grief to the frightening extremes of human behavior. Screenwriter Alex Garland has said a major motivation for him was confronting England’s overly romanticized past. If there’s a throughline between all these ideas, Spike is it. Since the first film, he’s experienced different versions of what life can be in this post-apocalyptic reality, many of them flawed, some of them downright evil. He can’t hold with his father’s toxic masculinity, encouraged by the culture of his village. DaCosta’s constant focus on Williams’ wide, innocent eyes lets us know the Jimmys offer him nothing worth having. Kelson, who helped Spike and his mother in the previous film, offers the closest approximation of hope, if Spike can save him.

All of the examples presented to Spike, who’s at the perfect age to start deciding what kind of person he wants to be, are mired in some version of the past. Spike’s village evoked the pastoral, ancient history of rural England. In addition to the Jimmy Savile getup, Lord Sir Jimmy Crystal is obsessed with the Teletubbies, recapping episodes like they’re Arthurian legend. Even Kelson, forward-thinking as he is, plays records in his bunker by Duran Duran and Iron Maiden. All of these are reminders of England’s past. Spike is the future. But what kind of future will he represent?

DaCosta capably takes audiences further along that journey, presenting even darker implications of life in this reality and the lives caught up alongside it. Based on where we end up, the third film will present an entirely new example that’s going to throw the conversation into a fascinating direction.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple proves this series isn’t just a cash-grab resurrection. These movies have something to say, and more than ever, we need to hear what they’re telling us.