“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” picks up right where the original film left off, with Nia DiCosta, the director of “Candyman,” finding within the hyperkinetic world of Danny Boyle’s zombified hellscape of Britain a spirituality previously unexplored, a calm and honest introspection about the nature of madness, violence, and kindness in the face of oblivion. When the old world crumbles to its foundations, what kind of future do we wish to build for ourselves: one of blood or of compassion, one of carnal regression or of expansive humanism? While the film does feature its fair share of monstrous gore and barbarity (you haven’t LIVED until you’ve seen someone get their head and spine pulled out by their eye sockets as if their head was a bowling ball), rage itself is the real enemy; a boiling, scalding, intoxicating tincture, quick to infect the mind and cloud our charitable instincts to care for each other in the face of fanaticism and death.
“The Bone Temple” finds our young hero from “28 Years Later,” Spike (Alfie Williams), trapped in an abandoned water park by a gang of cackling ghouls known as “The Jimmys,” led by a velvet jumpsuit-wearing man who fancies himself the son of the devil, Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). Spike is forced to battle one of “The Jimmys” to the death, his reward for winning being inclusion as one of Sir Jimmy’s Seven Fingers and a future of killing, skinning, and brutalizing the living with his new comrades. Meanwhile, at The Bone Temple, the iodine-drenched Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is hard at work continuing to build his memento mori to the dead when he makes a remarkable discovery. An Alpha Infected man, the towering and brutal Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), seems to be exuding cognizant thought. After being dosed with a tranquilizer of morphine and treated by the kind Dr. Kelson for arrow wounds, Samson returns the next day, not to attack the good doctor but for another dose of the mind-numbing opiates. Dr. Kelson is happy to oblige, taking this as an opportunity ill-afforded in the near three decades of Britain’s quarantine from the rest of the civilized world; not just to learn about the nature of the infection itself but also to have a companion. As Dr. Kelson spends time with the hulking infected creature, speaking to him with the calm of a rescue worker helping a scared dog escape a disaster zone, Samson begins to seem more human, more pliable, less intent on rampant destruction and brain eating. They sit together by the river like old souls finding solace in one another, they dance in a drug-addled stupor, they stare at the stars as old friends would long ago do. Could Dr. Kelson have discovered a key to the infection that ravaged their island? Is there still a soul behind the madness that has overtaken Samson? Sadly, there is little time to bask in successes when “The Jimmy’s”, with a terrified Spike in tow, stumble into The Bone Temple, believing the red-skinned Dr. Kelson to be not a lonely doctor living in solitude at the edge of the world, but Satan himself.
As a true middle chapter to the story Boyle, Di Costa, and screenwriter Alex Garland are collectively telling, “The Bone Temple” feels like a purposeful cementing of the trilogy’s themes, a zombie picture by way of hangout film, with the majority of the runtime devoted to Dr. Kelson’s experimentation with the drugged-out Samson. There has always been an immediacy to this particular series of horror films, a near real-time conversation between reality and fiction, with the creators using the genre to its fullest impressionistic extent through all the blood spewing and intestinal munching. It’s no mistake that “The Jimmys” are all dressed in the likeness of Jimmy Savile, the longtime British media personality who was revered until after his death, when he was revealed to have been a predatory sex offender against the very children he pretended to help. Of course, the leader of this band of wayward, blonde-wigged blood dervishes, Sir Jimmy Crystal, would not know this since the rage virus, which infected Britain, was born in 2002. However, WE know very well who Savile was, and watching mini-Jimmys terrorize innocent people leaves an intentional unease; less an overt message than a reeking stench which lingers and holds so much more power. The same can be said for Samson and all of the film’s infected, whose POV we are shown at several points throughout the film. Through their eyes, the innocent people they attack are tantamount to goblins or demons, horrific creations sure to destroy them if allowed the chance. That’s the infection, that’s the rage; and its unrequited spread has turned a good world to ash. It is Samson himself who recognizes the serenity of Dr. Kelson’s morphine and comes back for more, eager for some merciful balm against the swirling maelstrom of panic and bile overwhelming his senses. It seems the rage is not inherent to a person; it is something alien and unnatural, implanted by others and perpetuated through fear. It is a psychological state and one that can be treated through science and shared humanity. If only it were that easy to combat similar oppressors beyond the morbid bounds of The Bone Temple.
There is a scene early in the film with Dr. Kelson sitting beside the drugged Samson near a glittering river, sharing a tranquility with the same yowling monster that has tormented him for twenty-eight years. He speaks to Samson about what he can offer him with these medications, an alleviation from the painful Hell he clearly exists within. “Nothing wrong with peace and respite, Samson,” he says before licking a bit of morphine off one of his own darts and lying down. In doing so, he knows there is a chance he might be killed once the drugs wear off and Samson’s infection rears once again, but that is a chance he is willing to take for the opportunity to sit in the grass with another human being and let the day wash him away. Between “28 Years Later” and “The Bone Temple”, Ralph Fiennes has crafted a beloved character of immense warmth and understanding, a mouthpiece for sanity in a world gone mad who sees what could be instead of what is. While this film lacks the thunderous emotional devastation of the ending from “28 Years Later”, Di Costa deftly centers the audience into a naturalism that Boye’s bombastic style can never quite access. While I love Boyle’s maximalism, I found DiCosta’s solemnity soothing, succinct, and powerful, a concoction which left me in awe and in tears in equal measure, making me feel inexplicably hopeful as day-to-day life becomes more rageful and isolating. Perhaps there is a path to recovery for even the worst of us. I’d like to think so, even if I don’t always believe it. “The Bone Temple” presents lost souls searching listlessly for a devil to blame for the ills of the world, but as Dr. Kelson states near the film’s end, lying among the towering remains of the titular cadaverous cathedral, there is no supernatural demon to find and punish for the degradation of our reality. There are only people, for better or worse.
“The Bone Temple” is a more than worthy follow-up to one of the best films from last year. My friend, who saw the movie with me, had not yet seen “28 Years Later” and had a blast watching “Bone Temple”. She also had nightmares, the highest praise for a horror movie. If only our collective one were so easy to wake up from.
Find yourself some peace and respite through the madness where you can.
You’ll be glad you did.
“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” is playing at The Broad Theater and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
