Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Nia DaCosta
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry, Emma Laird
By the time a franchise gets to its fourth instalment it has usually run out of steam. There are exceptions, like 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and 1988's Halloween IV, but "fourquels" are generally a last gasp attempt to exploit what remains of a fanbase. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is not just a worthwhile fourquel, but arguably the best entry in its series. Where director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland's 28 Years Later was as uninspiring as you might expect from a belated sequel, this quickly turned around Nia DeCosta-directed follow-up (the two movies were made back to back) gives the franchise a much-needed bolt of energy.
As its title suggested, 28 Years Later was set almost three decades after the events of 2002's 28 Days Later. The drama was centred on Spike (Alfie Williams), a young boy who ventured from the safety of his sheltered island community onto the British mainland in the hopes of finding the fabled Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), whom Spike hoped could cure his sickly mother. Kelson was found living a Colonel Kurtz-like existence in an ossuary constructed from the bones of the dead. Like Day of the Dead's Dr Logan, Kelson was experimenting with the infected zombies, believing in a possibility of bringing them out of their rage-fuelled state.
That film played like a couple of random Walking Dead episodes stitched together, and it featured little that hadn't already been seen in zombie/post-apocalyptic cinema. But it did end on the most WTF note of 2025, with Spike being found by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), a Jimmy Savile obsessed thug who leads a gang of feral youths all named Jimmy and decked in the infamous Savile's signature tracksuit and blond mop garb.
DaCosta's film picks up almost immediately from the end of Boyle's, with Spike inducted into Crystal's gang through a bloody initiation ritual. If you've seen 2008's Eden Lake, the sight of O'Connell playing the leader of a gang of chavs under his spell will be somewhat familiar, but with their appropriation of Savile, the Teletubbies and the Power Rangers, this is the most uniquely odd youth gang to appear on screen since the Droogs of A Clockwork Orange.
Zombies, or "the infected", are largely absent from this entry, with the threat very much of a human variety here. Crystal leads his small mob on a campaign of terror, torturing anyone they stumble across in an explicitly gruesome manner. Much of the tension and suspense comes from how Spike handles this situation. As in the previous film, Williams is revelatory here, and watching his cherubic face process unspeakable horrors might be the most disturbing element of this series.
Crystal convincing a group of kids to worship a pop culture they weren't alive to experience speaks to how we now see young people in the UK and elsewhere being sold a vision of an idyllic past that never existed by political extremists (in my country, Ireland, a worrying amount of people born after the end of The Troubles have lately developed a naive secondhand nostalgia for the IRA, having never lived through its atrocities). Like the recent Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, this is another movie that uses genre trappings to call out the exploitation of young people by older men who require their subservience to achieve their goals.
The film's secondary subplot catches up on Kelson and his experiments with an "Alpha" infected he has affectionately named "Samson" (Chi Lewis-Parry). Using morphine, Kelson finds a way to chill out Samson, who becomes something of a BFF to the mad doctor. In its two subplots, which ultimately converge in incredible Iron Maiden-scored fashion, The Bone Temple sees a zombie regaining its humanity while uninfected survivors lose all trace of theirs.
Along with Williams, Fiennes was the standout of the previous entry, and he's on top form again here. He gets the honour of taking centre stage in an incredible musical set-piece that plays like it belongs in some demented alternate version of Boyle's opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics. O'Connell gets the showy role as the hideous Jimmy Crystal, but it's two of his co-stars who deliver the most impressive work here in Emma Laird and Erin Kellyman. As two of Crystal's subordinates who find themselves on very different moral trajectories, both young actresses disappear into their roles, unrecognisable from their recent turns in The Brutalist and Eleanor the Great.
This instalment benefits from DaCosta's indistinctive but steady directorial hand. Free of Boyle's penchant for sub-Oliver Stone distracting techniques, we can now focus our attention on the characters and their story rather than the filmmaking. DaCosta has recognised that this is a world that's so crazy that it doesn't need any camera or editing tricks. The lunatics have taken over the asylum in this world, and DaCosta is simply here to document the revolution as a neutral observer.
A major actor pops up for a late cameo that sets up a coming third (or fifth) instalment, and having previously found myself underwhelmed by this franchise, I'm suddenly all in with its distinctively English brand of eccentric insanity.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in UK/ROI cinemas from January 16th.
