28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE picks up where last year’s 28 YEARS LATER left off. It also picks up with some characters that were peripheral to the last installment, but who will prove central to this one. That last film introduced us to the dangers inherent in a post-pandemic population thrown back to the Middle Ages and dodging the fast-moving zombies created by the Rage Virus that has finally been contained to the strictly quarantined British Isles. This film, also penned by Alex Garland, deals with humanity’s tendency to go feral once the strictures of civilization have dissolved, and religion becoming whatever you need it to be to feel safe. It’s familiar territory, but this version juxtaposes the nihilistic lawlessness of Lord of the Flies with the enlightened self-interest of kindness.
Spike (Alfie Williams), the 12-year-old who survived bringing his mother from the safety of their island to the eponymous Bone Temple on the British mainland only to lose her to an illness that Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) could not heal, has fallen in with Sir Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), the psychotic messiah of band of seven kids whom he has dubbed both Jimmy and his fingers. The price to remain in the relative safety provided by Sir Jimmy, is his soul, to which he clings even as Sir Jimmy plunders the countryside and performs unspeakable acts of “charity”. The kind that makes Spike throw up. The kind that is accompanied by a sermon from Sir Jimmy about the necessity of pleasing his father, Old Nick, aka Satan.
If Jimmy kills for sport, or to please his infernal father, the zombies kill for food, or at least their understanding of food, which is demonstrated early on as the Alpha, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), dispatches a hunter and cracks his skull open for the traditional zombie fare of fresh brains. Samson, dubbed as such by Dr. Kelson for his size and long hair, also exhibits a soupçon of awareness beyond the instinctual need to feed. He also exhibits a particular fondness for the morphine darts Dr. Kelson uses to take down the zombies who come too close to the eponymous ossuary he’s building. So much fondness, in fact, that he not only returns to the Bone Temple for more, he brings Dr. Kelson an offering by way of thanks. A gruesome offering, but one that is obviously well-intended.
The story of how Spike and Dr. Kelson survive their new companions makes for a sometimes gory meditation on how people go feral in many senses of that word. And how they choose the paths that bring them to or take them from humanity. As a parable for how the need for security can lead to exchanging decency for depravity, it is both prescient and disturbing with what it says about surrendering identity to a cult. As a parable for patience and kindness expressed with an open mind and heart, it is potent with cockeyed optimism that demands to taken seriously.
Director Nia DaCosta combines the better angels of our nature with the danger of a reality where one wrong move, one bad decision can be fatal. This is no jump-and-scare technique, but rather the slow simmer as the full implications and horror build with each smiling riposte from Sir Jimmy as he leers at his victims, and each act of trust from Dr. Kelson as he begins to see something more than animal instinct if Samson. Or is it just his own fervent desire for to believe that there is a cure for the virus and the world?
Fiennes is a glorious enigma, doused in the red pigment that signifies the iodine that keeps the doctor safe, and losing himself in vinyl tracks from a hand-cranked phonograph that sooths the solitary Kelson through the night. Sad-eyed but not despairing, he exists with equanimity among the dead, accepting mortality but not the end of civilization. He is a mad hermit with other-worldly visions that uniquely equip him for the charnel house of his homeland. There is even a gentle humor that is wise, but not morbid. As the anti-Christ of the piece, O’Connell is kinetic, swaggering through his sadism with a whiff of fear still resonating from the childhood trauma we saw in the last film, and driving him to inflict the pain on others that he has internalized. And once again, Williams gives an indelible performance, mature beyond his tender years combining desperation and hope as he navigates a nightmare with a palpable instinct to survive as something more than an animal.
28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE is a dark film about the power of light. Not so much a sequel as a seamless continuation of 28 YEARS LATER, it expands the post-pandemic story with a clear-eyed take on how fragile the niceties of civilization are when confronted with disaster, and are thereby all the more precious.
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