Alex Moss EditorHot off the heels of last year’s 28 Days Later reboot to the franchise, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple had some heavy lifting to do in order to live up to the expectation set in Danny Boyle’s last film. Thankfully, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a deeply textured horror film that refuses to conform to expectations.
Picking up shortly after the end of 28 Years Later it continues that black mirror approach of using genre cinema to comment on the chaotic world we live in. Having been rescued from the infected, Spike (Alfie Williams) finds himself recruited into The Jimmy’s – a violent group of marauders led by the enigmatic Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). Traveling from homestead to homestead, Jimmy’s violent ways soon lead them to Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) who believes he might have found a cure for the Rage Virus.
This time around fans of the Rage Virus might feel short-changed. There is less and less running away from red-eyed anger monsters, although early on you are treated to some jaw-dropping levels of gore, and more contemplative musing on what defines humanity.
Because this is a film that is far more interested in the way the remains of humanity are dealing with a society that has turned on itself. Bone Temple examines the way a broken world falls between extremes. On the one hand you have rage, violence, anger and manipulation. On the other you have peace, reasoning and love. A case of the immovable object meeting the unstoppable force.
Nia DeCosta’s direction delicately and vibrantly brings Alex Garland’s script to life. There are visuals here that sear themselves into your mind – and like the themes on offer – some of them beautiful, some harrowing. From the glorious green of a world reclaimed by nature to the harrow hues or red and fire of a world waging war on itself. Long gone are those DV-Cam looks of 28 Days Later, replaced instead by one of the most beautiful films in recent memory.
There are two central performances that remind you of two incredible talents. Jack O’Connor has made a name playing disturbing villains but his Sir Jimmy Crystal is grounded in trauma. As deplorable as he is we see glimpses of a scared man that lives in a state of indoctrinated fear. It’s all he has known and so uses it and spreads it to others, infecting them with the fear to keep them alive. And then you have Sir Ralph Fiennes. As with the last film his Dr. Kelson is mesmerising. A tranquility in the eye of a raging storm around him. In a film that often grips with violence, Fiennes seduces with his soft spoken reasoning. His scenes with the Rage ‘alpha’ Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) are deeply affecting.
Not since George A. Romero’s Living Dead franchise has a series of horror films continuously managed to reinvent itself without ever losing sight of its keen insights into the current social landscape. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple feels both original and very much part of the 28 universe. A true horror with heart and brains that reminds you that humanity is, and always will be, its own worst enemy.
