28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review – Ralph Fiennes is exceptional in the best chapter yet of zombie horror | film

IIt’s very rare for a Fourquel film to be the best film in a franchise, but that’s how things stand with the volatile 28 Days Later series. In this episode, which immediately follows the previous one, 28 years later, Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell bring pure death metal madness. There’s real energy and drama in this latest installment of the post-apocalyptic horror-thriller saga, conceived by director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland in 2003, with Nia DaCosta helming the film. Finneas’ dance to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” is considered one of the most extraordinary moments of his career. At the show I attended, we were on our feet, looking for a speaker box to bang our heads on. The band should definitely re-release this track with Fiennes’ performance as the new official video. His Voldemort was never terrible.

It’s so exhilarating to see this generational confrontation between great actors like Fiennes and O’Connell. This brings us to the point of agnosticism about this entire franchise; Bone Temple is the best for an interesting reason – because the zombies are almost completely irrelevant and are minimal. The boring zombie action is a bit downplayed, what matters is the conflict between sentient humans. Even the important zombie here is interesting because it turns into something else.

In the previous film, set 28 years after the original zombie outbreak, a kid named Spike (Alfie Williams) leaves the safe quarantine zone of Holy Island off the northeastern coast of England for the zombie-infested mainland. He ponders rumors of a doctor played by Fiennes, the sole standard-bearer of decency and civilisation, who has created a bone-dead memorial to fallen humanity: the Temple of Bones. At the end of the previous film, there was an exceptional new twist in the franchise expansion that critics couldn’t mention due to spoiler rules and which, until now, new viewers may want to avert their eyes from.

It turns out there’s a murderous Clockwork-Orangey gang of uninfected people roaming around – unafraid of zombies and more interesting than zombies – led by the grotesque Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (O’Connell) whose tracksuits and blond wigs are modeled after… erm… Jimmy Savile. It’s not at all clear when these people will see Savile on screen; Their heyday was long before their youth, although they remember and worship the Teletubbies.

Terrified Jimmy encounters poor, bewildered Spike, and this brave child witnesses at close range the bullies’ obnoxious and extremely violent lifestyle. And Sir Lord Jamie, who has developed an entire psychopathic theology to justify his power over his gullible followers, emerges as a terribly watchable new character (although Erin Kellyman plays Jamie’s not-so-submissive protégé).

We also see more of Fiennes’ Dr. Ian Kelson, whose strange orange skin (the result of self-medication with iodine) and unusual behavior are misunderstood by Jimmy’s family. Dr. Kelson is actually trying to come to terms with the rampaging Alpha Zombie all over the place, a giant he calls “Samson” (played by Che Louis Barry); Dr. Kelson’s kindness, Christ-like non-aggression, and stockpile of medicines mean that we see unexpected depths in Samson.

It’s a thrilling, frank and vivid – albeit very harrowing – film in which there is real human danger and conflict. Non-zombies are more cinematic.