‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ is the Strongest in the Franchise

Last year’s 28 Years Later was a welcome return to a film series stuck in development hell for nearly 17 years. Coming off a streak of commercial and critical successes, Alex Garland (Civil War, Warfare) channelled that energy into a thrilling ride of action and horror, with a strong, emotionally compelling ending. 28 Years Later gave us new characters to invest in as well as tugging at our heartstrings, but was its sequel needed just six months later? Planned trilogies are tricky to pull off, particularly in an era of ever-growing media constantly battling for our dwindling attention spans. Wanting three movies to tell a complete story is a tough ask. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has the odds stacked against it, but series creator Garland and director Nia DaCosta craft a story with smaller stakes and heightened horror that gives us the strongest entry in the 28 Days Later franchise to date.  

When making the second installment of a trilogy, the goal should be to disrupt expectations and explore the nuances of the film’s universe. A horror trilogy offers a chance to get darker, create more terror, and even hope in places yet to be explored. The aim is for The Bride of Frankenstein, not Exorcist II. Garland and DaCosta are up to the task by testing the morality of the desolate and desperate, where doing the right thing can lead to your demise.

28 Years Later ends with an abrupt epilogue that is slightly out of touch with the rest of the film. As young Spike (Alfie Williams) is curious to explore the world outside of his former home, we are introduced to Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell; Sinners) offering to save his life from a band of charging infected. While everyone in this post-apocalyptic world normally wears hiking gear and sour discontents, Jimmy holds a devilish grin while donning a velour tracksuit, gold chains and a tiara, signaling (rather than telling) he is not of this world. With Jimmy are six of his so-called Fingers, all named a version of Jimmy, and they pounce the group of infected like Power Rangers, with front flips and deadly weapons. Though comical, this caused audiences to be equally intrigued and confused by their inclusion in the story, leaving to question Jimmy’s motives, though his brooding villainy is easy to sense. 

The Bone Temple picks up right where we left off, with Jimmy and the Fingers challenging Spike to a fight to the death. Toying with Spike, the collective’s panache for violence is on full display. We learn they are a group of raiders, looking for people to kill and potential new inductees. Surviving the challenge, Spike is included in the group for their next attack on an innocent family in the country. Visibly disturbed by the violence he witnesses and is forced to participate in, Spike becomes an avatar for the audience, being thrust into the violence of the world and going along with it for survival. Because of this, the story’s first bold choice is decentering Spike to allow for other characters to flourish.

Though Garland does not like to describe the series as such, most zombie films offer gnarled bodies and even gnarlier kills with a sprinkle of interesting characters or two. For a fourth film installment, The Bone Temple could not rely on more mounds of dead infected. Garland smartly narrows the film’s focus, shifting from the abandoned world to a handful of outcasts. Unlike 28 Years Later, which relied on nifty camera tricks and bloody action (though things do get intensely bloody with the Fingers), DaCosta creates atmospheric tension through subtler moments and effective sound design and needle drops, which in turn amplify the sheer terror. In the film’s second bold choice, this infectious disease, which was the basis of the previous three films, is mostly left in the background. In its place is the true evil of The Bone Temple: Jimmy’s ability to sway this vulnerable group to do his murderous bidding in his delusional quest for power and anarchy. (Sound like anyone we know?) 

Though Jimmy and The Fingers are the obvious foils, something interesting happens to Dr. Ian Kelson. In the previous film, Kelson, played masterfully by Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), started as a wild card; the audience could not be sure whether to trust him. Eventually, he proved himself a gentle, though eccentric, guide for Spike. The Bone Temple harnesses his gentleness to show that even in the most dire circumstances, we can choose to do the right thing. Samson, an infected Alpha able to rip a person’s skull and spine away from their body like a chicken wing, locates Kelson for another encounter. Kelson is able to hit Samson with a morphine dart to avoid being killed. However, Samson repeatedly returns to Kelson to keep getting more dope fixes. This wrinkle creates an interesting bond between the doctor and the discarded. In the midst of chaos, this unlikely pair finds humanity in sitting around being high, listening to music. (Who among us?) When the morphine supply begins to run low, Kelson wonders if Samson’s infection can be cured. 

Coincidentally, Jimmy and The Fingers discover Kelson’s location during this pivotal moment. To spare his life, Jimmy gets Kelson to agree to convince The Fingers to unconditionally follow Jimmy’s commands of continued violence and to expand the number of Fingers under his power. The unabashed good guy and moral barometer of the film, Kelson, must decide to go along with this charade or risk losing his life.

In the closing scene, two people spot some folks evading a group of infected in the distance. In the final words uttered in the film, one character asks, “Do we help them?” Another character pauses a beat and returns, “Of course we do.” Even if the hesitation is a moment to calculate the pros and cons of helping others in this godforsaken time, we know what the right thing to do is, even while knowing it is rarely ever easy. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple subverts tropes to create a terrifying experience, creating hope through the carnage. Nia DaCosta does an immaculate job of balancing the horror of the moment with the possibility of moving beyond it. With last year’s Hedda being a strong effort, she is on a run of noteworthy films like Garland. Other than Danny Boyle returning for the trilogy’s dismount, details about the future film are scarce. However, they have earned the trust that the story is worth revisiting at least one last time.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars