Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) spends a lot of time alone. Coated in iodine to stave off the zombie virus that has laid waste to England for three decades, he sometimes dances alone in his ossuary — a bone temple — to the music of his youth, Duran Duran. He gazes at old photos listening to “Girls on Film,” the lyric, “and she wonders how she ever got here as she goes under again,” rattling around his shaved skull.
But Dr. Kelson won’t cry for yesterday, as he tries to survive this now ordinary world, isolated and primitive, where zombies roam the countryside, and pockets of human survivors quietly scavenge. Directed by Nia DaCosta, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” starts right where 2025’s “28 Years Later,” directed by Danny Boyle, left off. Boyle and writer Alex Garland originated the franchise in 2002 with “28 Days Later,” kick-starting the 2000s zombie craze. Garland is penning the scripts for the “28 Years” sequels, a planned trilogy.
In “The Bone Temple,” it’s not the zombies one has to worry about — it’s the Jimmies. Our young hero Spike (Alfie Williams), having abandoned the secluded safety of his island home in the wake of his mother’s death, finds himself at the mercy of this merry band of bloodthirsty pranksters, shepherded by a sadistic Manson-esque leader, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell).
Clad in ratty platinum blond wigs and colorful tracksuits, the cult apes the look of the late English television personality and notorious sexual predator Jimmy Savile. Sir Jimmy is obsessed with the television of his childhood, before his reality was ripped limb from limb. Raised in chaos and bloodshed, receiving directives from a satanic voice in his head dubbed “Old Nick,” Sir Jimmy and his bewildered teenage followers, the Fingers, leave a bloody path in their wake, handing out “charity,” as they call it, randomly torturing the few humans who are unlucky enough to encounter their swaggering and silly nihilism.
Spike is a quivering young boy, but he’s good with a blade and has strong survival instincts. Joining the Fingers is his way of continuing to survive for one more day. Roaming the same patch of northern England, they’re on a collision course with Dr. Kelson, who spends his days hanging out with a heavily drugged alpha zombie, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry, who delivers a beautifully unexpected performance), hoping to find a way to bring him back to life.
In this second installment, DaCosta has the challenging task of continuing a story with established characters, and then leaving us with new ones, and more story to be told. What’s remarkable is her ability to keep the thread of tension pulled taut, even as we jump between characters and locations, and as she offsets savagery and noise with stillness and quiet. The film is shockingly violent and bloody, but there are also profoundly poetic moments and images that pop up like wildflowers in a field.
She does have some dazzling material to work with — the strange beauty of the bone temple, where the strikingly orange Kelson tends to the doped up Samson, and the distinctive style of the Jimmies, with their “Children of the Corn” hair, gold chains, tiaras and fairy wings. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt brings his own visual language to the film too. While Boyle’s iPhone camera rigs zipped and zoomed around the landscape with an almost game-like mobility, Bobbitt’s camera shakes with zombie rage and then stills, lulling us in and out of violence and peace.
In “The Bone Temple,” Garland juxtaposes faith and reason and how they oppose one another in a world where the foundations and “order” have been torn asunder. Believing in something bigger than ourselves can feel comforting even if it’s false, because humans contain all the beauty, grace and violence that can be imagined. Religion is mere theater — or at least a really great rock show.
“The Bone Temple” is a deeply wistful film, imbued with nostalgia and highly specific British cultural memory: Teletubbies, Duran Duran, Iron Maiden, Radiohead, Jimmy Savile, Winston Churchill. There’s a sweetness to the comfort of childhood touchstones and shared history in a world gone psychotic with death and destruction. These small reminders of our humanity are adjacent to Kelson’s practice of honoring the dead as a way to honor life.
Despite longing for the past, Garland knows we cannot go back to the way things were. All we can do is remember — or “never forget,” as some have famously said. Reality is bleak, shredded by violence and disinformation, but Garland does allow for a glimmer of hope. If zombie-ism is mass psychosis, an infectious disease passed from person to person, maybe there’s a way to treat it, a way to wake up from the fog. It’s a nice idea, especially in this profoundly un-ordinary world.
Katie Walsh is a critic for Tribune News Service.
“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gore, graphic nudity, language throughout, and brief drug use)
Running time: 1:49
How to watch: In theaters Jan. 16