Review by Tim Robins
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS
After Avatar: Fire and Ash, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple feels like being hit in the face with a wet halibut. It’s dark, distinctly British sense of humour is certain to fish slap any lingering, James Cameron-ish hippy-dippyness out of you.
Written by Alex Garland and directed by Nis DaCosta (of 2023’s The Marvels infamy), the film is a direct sequel to 28 Years Later (2025) which, you may recall, ended with youngster Spike (Alfie Williams) being ‘rescued’ from the infected by a gang of Jimmy Saville impersonators, led by “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell).
My anxiety that the young boy would be sexually assaulted is replaced with a different kind of abuse, when he is made to witness the Jimmies’ acts of ‘charity’ which include flaying their hapless, harmless victims alive, accompanied with a cry of “How’zat!” from Crystal’s gang members. His ‘fingers’ are, for the most part, willing to carry out Crystal’s grim crusade, and include Ellen Kellyman (Jimmy Ink), Emma Lard (Jimmina), Maura Bird (Jimmy Jones).
The Bone Temple has upped the moments of horror and gore enough to earn it an 18 certificate in the UK. There’s no escaping the fact that large parts of the film require a steely stomach. Set in England’s green but decidedly unpleasant land, we are treated to a ‘What if’, alternate, 2025. It’s as if, back in the day, a zombie apocalypse had overtaken Emmerdale Farm, and Mrs Sugden started serving up brains for breakfast.
The presence of Jimmy Saville-inspired villains also gives this timeline a 1970s/80s feel. The genius of Garland’s script is that it turns the grotesque celebrity into a figure of folklore. The Bone Temple’s satirical myth of Britain has guaranteed that Saville’s evil now lives on as myth of Britain as much as fact. Crystal is Sauron in Garland’s grim, dark The Lord of the Rings, corrupting all his fingers.
Ralph Fiennes returns as survivor Dr Ian Kelson, who is still busying himself constructing a bone temple composed of rage victims’ skulls and bones. As a side project, Kelson has taken to treating the rage virus by medicating a local Alpha he has named Samson. This doctor/ patient relationship is interrupted when Kelson’s scarlet-skinned appearance – he smears himself with iodine to ward off the effect of the virus – leads him to assume the mantle of ‘Old Nick’ and convince the Jimmies that he is the father of their leader: no one less than the Anti-Christ himself.
There’s a lot going on beneath The Bone Temple’s rivers of gore. While the infected are humanised, the Jimmies are demonized. This is accompanied with a thoughtful consideration of the role of Bible stories in the character’s lives.
The film doesn’t bluntly set up an opposition between religion and medical science: rather it explores how Bible stories of old inform all the characters’ understanding of life. Kelson names an infected “Alpha” , Samson, ostensibly because of the creature’s long hair.
There are many shots of full-frontal male nudity, including the “Alpha’s” giant-sized man-thing. I expect the nudity functions the narrative’s exploration of the nature of humanity, stripped of its trappings of civilization.
I did wonder if another point was being made. Was the name Bone Temple playing with profane associations with “bone”, “boner” and the sexual meaning of “give a dog a bone”. This isn’t exactly a subtext, but a playful , spattering of possible interpretations left in plain sight.
As we saw in 28 Years Later, at the sacred heart of the temple is nothing less than a phallus of skulls. The erection towers above the temple’s altar, uniting the key sentiments by which Dr Kelson lives, respect for the twin aspects of human life: a reminder that we must live and yet we must also die. A shot of the characters, rendered in gore and encircled by bones, seems more a representation of the cycle of life and not that the film has been one big circle jerk.
In The Bone Temple, remembering becomes an act of caring for oneself and others. Kelson dances to Duran Duran, his late wife’s favourite band. The rage virus has re-membered humanity and Kelson’s treatment of Samson is an act of caring. It also takes on an air of spirituality, something missing from the domestication of ‘Bubb’ in George Romero’s 1985 zombie flick, Day of The Dead.
So there’s plenty The Bone Temple could be about. In part it is a cautionary tale of cult leaders, and a rebuke to those who feel religion is up to the job of caring for the future. The film also plays with the way life is made meaningful, mythologised, through music.
Memories of The Bone Temple will certainly include the performances of O’Connell and Fiennes, both of whom are compelling. O’Connell’s Jimmy slides between actually believing that he is the son of Satan and cynically exploiting his gang of followers – his “fingers” – to achieve his own unpleasant ends. But it is Fiennes, cosplaying as his Satanic Majesty and dancing to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast”, who brings the film to a bravura climax that will stick in your memory long after the film has finished.
At time of writing, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has not done well at the box office Stateside, despite being critically well received. Perhaps the film’s American audience doesn’t grasp its reference points. Then again, I’m not sure if the younger, UK audience, immediately grasped that ‘Old Nick’ is a name for the Devil.
Garland’s take on a rage-addled Britain has delivered a dark, sadistic, parable compelling enough for me to want to see how it all ends. I hope it ends well for the characters, but I fear the worst.
Tim Robins
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in cinemas now
Head downthetubes for…
• Bones and All: A (Pre)History of Death & Display in “28 Years Later” – Animal Archaeology
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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