28 Years Later… The Bone Temple
Through bitter experience Doctor Ian Kelson has learned something his young friend Spike is only now coming to comprehend, how not to cry for yesterday, cleansing the bodies of the dead, peeling the boiled flesh from the bleached bones and continuing to construct the Bone Temple to memorialise the millions lost twenty eight years on from the escape of the Rage virus.
By day continuing his attempts to rehabilitate Samson, wondering how he ever got here as he goes under again each night to his subterranean lair, for Spike his own trial is just beginning, captured and confronted by Jimmy Crystal, prophet of this terrible new age, forced to fight for a place among the Fingers, a lucky strike putting his opponent down, the shifting sun placing the former Jimmy in shadow as Spike inherits his golden mantle.
Directed by The Marvels’ Nia DaCosta, again scripted by Alex Garland 28 Years Later… The Bone Temple maintains continuity with what has gone before, both the immediate predecessor and the time long gone, equilibrium between hunters and hunted established but precarious, the fragment of society on the island examined last time but now the contrast of the mainland explored through the deranged Jimmy Crystal (Sinners’ Jack O’Connell) and the more sanguine Doctor Kelson (The Menu’s Ralph Fiennes).
Spike (Alfie Williams) the unwitting and terrified bridge between them, like 28 Years Later…, The Bone Temple is not the film that might have been expected but is all the stronger for that, given a higher rating through the violence is no more explicit but likely in the acknowledgement that where before it was primarily between the infected and the survivors, here it is the humans who fight and kill each other for supremacy.
Vicious leader of a death cult kept in line by cruelty and humiliation, in the insane ruins Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal posits that he is the son of Satan, believing that he is in control and lashing out when the world does not conform to his plans, his personal rage a contrast to Doctor Kelson who wholly places his trust in fate, developing experimental therapies for alpha Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) but aware that his time and resources are dwindling.
Danny Boyle a director known for his precise deployment of iconic songs in his work, it is ironic that this film with which he had little direct involvement in is the first in the sequence to surprise by foregrounding selections which bring relief and melancholy nostalgia, The Bone Temple perhaps moving towards acceptance and atonement but only through breathless and fiery confrontation, twisting the blade towards another unclear future and still learning grim lessons from the past.
28 Years Later… The Bone Temple is currently on general release
