28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Spoiler Review
One of my favourite scenes from any film ever is from 28 Days Later when, having woken up from a coma to a deserted and desolate London, Jim (Cillian Murphy) walks into a church looking for answers but instead finds what looks like a mass grave; bodies strewn across each other and piled up amongst the pews.
As Jim calls out in the hopes of finding someone left alive, two of the infected shoot up, eyes wide and mouths agape. Jim stumbles on but is attacked by a quick moving priest whose arms jerk wildly and eyes wild with rage.
Not only does this scene involve great cinematography from Anthony Dod Mantle, but it perfectly plunges audiences into a frenzied tension that will only continue to ramp up throughout the film. It is stellar British cinema.
While I choose to pretend that 28 Weeks Later doesn’t exist, I was very excited to hear that Danny Boyle and Alex Garland were coming back for another sequel with 28 Years Later but nothing had me quite as pumped as the glimpse of what was to come from Nina DaCosta’s The Bone Temple.
My favourite moments from 28 Years Later were spent with Ralph Fiennes covered in iodine and being chased by Chi Lewis-Parry’s terrifying Samson and so I went in to see The Bone Temple with high hopes and a mild inappropriate crush on the aforementioned naked zombie.
With such a wacky introduction to the Jimmies at the end of Boyle’s 28 Years Later, it was great to plunge straight into the kind of psychotic fun and games this band of merry murderers loves to instigate, and get a proper introduction to Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) and his Teletubbie idolising followers.
Sir Jimmy claims to be the one true son of Satan and spends his time skipping through the countryside looking for innocent folk to bestow his charity upon, which, funnily enough, also happens to look a lot like torturing and murdering them, and he’s decided to keep Spike (Alfie Williams) as his new devote.
O’Connell makes a perfectly deranged villain, being both horrifying and delightful to watch. Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl absolutely nail the production and costume design, with the Jimmies entire look giving everything they do an edge of disturbed nostalgia, and O’Connell embraces the role with a cool sense of assurity that he is absolutely doing the devil’s work.
With his lank blonde hair, the grey and brown teeth he routinely flashes with a sick smirk and the Jimmy Saville inspired tracksuit, Sir Jimmy is a joke and the perfect cult leader. He’s laughable and he’s making it all up as he goes but that is what makes him so brilliant as a villain; it makes him unpredictable and violently demented, drunk on power and blood-lust.
While the Jimmies are inflicting trauma onto poor Spike and whoever else they stumble across, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) had begun to routinely sedate Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the alpha to rule them all, and it isn’t long before he notices glimpses on the man behind the terrible virus, giving him hope that perhaps there is an answer to the world’s damnation after all.
Scenes between Lewis-Parry and Fiennes are an utter delight, the ideal antidote to the carnage inflicted by the Jimmies. Dr. Kelson is a man that has accepted his eventual death but remains hopeful for the state of the world, hopeful that he might make it better before he leaves it all behind. Audiences will already know this from the film’s predecessor, his bone and skull monuments are evidence of this, but we’re able to see a different, somewhat silly, and sweet side to him when he is with Samson in The Bone Temple.
Two worlds collide when the Jimmies find themselves face to face with Dr. Kelson, who they believe to be Old Nick aka Satan himself, and here DaCosta, Pugh and McColl really flex their skills, turning Kelson’s sensitive and peaceful castle of bones into true hellfire and brimstone.
Kelson puts on a magnificent show to deceive the Jimmies and Fiennes is both intimidating and amusing at this point in his role. Blasting Iron Maiden’s The Number of The Beast, Fiennes flings himself around, breathing fire and calling to his faux followers to do as he commands.
It’s so silly and funny but it is done so well and looks amazing. DaCosta really showcases her talent and director’s eye, and proves herself a very worthy collaborator within the franchise and I hope she’ll helm the third 28 Years Later film, which is set up at the very end of The Bone Temple.
The film ends with poor Spike and the only likeable Jimmy, aka Kelly (Erin Kellyman), flee from a group of infected, heading towards a pretty little place in the countryside, home to none other than the Jim, played by Cillian Murphy, reprising his role from the original 28 Days Later film.
I loved a full circle moment, an element of an elliptical narrative, and I hope this is what we’ll get from another 28 Years Later script. Horror is such an underrated genre but it can be utilised for so much, such meaty undercurrents of theme and message.
The Bone Temple does this particularly well, there is so much to explore within Sir Jimmy’s character alone, not to mention the potential within Samson’s character. It takes me back to being a very nerdy film students, I’d have had a field day with The Bone Temple, I still could.