28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review | Ralph Fiennes Presides Over Smashing Sequel

How do you follow up something as sensationally entertaining and grimly moving as Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later? Expectations would be high as Boyle had delivered one of 2025’s most delicious surprises. The Bone Temple picks up right from the previous volume’s events. Director Nia DaCosta has an unenviable job of steering the middle chapter in an intended trilogy. However, the ostensible biggest flourishes must be reserved while still setting the stage for the final skirmish in this zombie apocalypse. It’s a tricky balance wherein the mid chapter cannot just be a filler. It must resonate with individual purpose and conviction while fitting into the corpus as well as segueing into the sense of an ending. The task is mighty, but DaCosta, who recently directed Hedda, a swishy delectable queer spin on a classic, proves a worthy equal.

The film opens with Spike’s (Alfie Williams) forced enlistment into Sir Jimmy Crystal’s (Jack O’Connell) gang. Perhaps the most undeserving drawback here is how Williams, who along with Jodie Foster propped up 28 Years Later with such emotional force, is relegated to mostly looking terrorized. He’s swapped to an inconsequential presence, while Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and Sir Jimmy hold the fort in this instalment. In a crisis, how do you respond? With love and generosity or vicious mayhem?

It's only January but this will endure as one of the year's best films, a thrilling, tender franchise intervention by a filmmaker in complete tonal command. Lower on zombie count and more scaled down than its predecessors, The Bone Temple sets a compassionate gaze on a world having careened into complete annihilating uncertainty. The film poses its questions with glee and relish, never hard nosing itself. How can cycles of violence, gaslighting, manipulation and hostility be broken, reversed? Jimmy's satanic cult is premised on threat and torture. There are ghastly rites around replacement of its members or 'fingers', as Jimmy has christened. Violence is spectacle. Mutilation is called 'offering charity'. Jimmy breeds delusion among his minions, though there are seeds of doubt in one. A follower (Erin Kellyman), who’s the only empathetic soul towards Spike, wonders if Jimmy’s gospels are at all sincere. Has he even met his father Old Nick, whom he claims to guide through every brutal step?

There’s both vigour and emotional potency in the film, holding us utterly captive. DaCosta and screenwriter Alex Garland keep horror glued firmly to its emotional dimension. Albeit the franchise itself doesn’t wholly piggyback on extreme shock, The Bone Temple dares to move in a deceptively smaller register. Bouts of violence are strewn over, here especially linked to the Jimmy’s murderous band. Yes, there are stretches when it accrues suffocating nihilism, indulging a fair bit of sadism. But it’s only set up to contravene with Kelson’s humane appeal. Cultish hogwash and science face off as the two seemingly divergent strands entwine. Kelson remains a towering anomaly, a reminder of lost humanity in a world gone out of order. Fiennes anchors the film with heart, elegiac poetry and sinewy resolve. Kelson nurses an infected alpha (Lewis-Parry) whom he calls Samson. The doctor chooses peace and trust instead of aggression. Wondrously, wordless friendship and kindness flower. Samson keeps returning, circling Kelson’s ossuary. The two dance, sit in silence. For a while, the desolation washes away.

The Bone Temple ratchets to a climactic encounter for the ages. DaCosta takes glorious, wild swings and Fiennes is there to match every stride. He’s always been terrific, but The Bone Temple grants him the most fabulous playground. Watching him go all out and dance to Iron Maiden’s The Number of The Beast would instantly rank as one of the year’s most transcendental scenes. It’s splashily dramatic, ecstatic and so full-bodied you’d want to join in. Fiennes combines spectacle with the subtlest gossamer threads of dry humour and sorrow. Loneliness clouds his face even as he puts up a resourceful, resilient front. Jack O’Connell goes toe to toe with Fiennes. He’s key to the film’s diabolical exploits, meshing sly mischief and menace so intrinsically it blurs into a nasty joke.

The film’s dark, bruised heart reveals itself in these clashes and contradictions. When Sir Jimmy and Kelson first interact, The Bone Temple springs its themes brightly in a confrontation between a satanist and atheist. Jimmy is almost stunned when Kelson talks of the virus and infection. DaCosta slickly juggles the narrative’s mournful strains and juddering violence. The gentleness and soothing in Kelson as he basks in Samson’s company is unavoidably touching. The Bone Temple balances the outrageous and the melancholic with deft control. No big emotion dominates here, but the slight curls of wistfulness over a world gone awry in fear and antagonism seep through the stables. This film radiates such a lambent humanity in true memento mori spirit you walk out irreparably moved.