★★★ (3 out of 4)
Hey, didn’t we just see “28 Years Later” back in June? We did, but “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” now in theaters, is a sequel to that sequel, with “Bone Temple” added to the title for clarity. Are we good? OK then, onward.
There are other differences as well. Instead of “Slumdog Millionaire” Oscar winner Danny Boyle directing, this time it’s “Candyman” horror wiz Nia DaCosta, though Boyle will return for the third and final chapter. What you need to know is that DaCosta is no copycat, taking her own approach to the zombie apocalypse that is even more graphic in its flesh-ripping cannibalism. The R rating slapped on “The Bone Temple” is fully deserved. You’ve been warned.
Two characters on the sidelines last time take full control of the whip smart script, again written with style and substance by the great Alex Garland (“Ex Machina,” “Civil War”) who did the hit series starter “28 Days Later” in 2002. Garland uses England’s new isolationism (think Brexit) as a way to rethink the world, which turns out to be a back to basic good and evil.
You’ll be thinking about this scary, savvy fright fest long after you wake up screaming.
First up is Ian Kelson, a broken doctor (he builds a bone temple out of human skulls) scarily well played by Ralph Fiennes as a combo of mad Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” and his own demonic Lord Voldemort in the “Harry Potter” franchise. The dude is definitely bent but has a good side. Doc Kelson, his face covered in fire-red iodine to ward off attack, thinks he might be able to cure those infected by the “rage virus” and wants to start with Samson, the looming alpha played to the terror max by Chi Lewis-Parry.
Equally fearsome, though slathered in surface charm is Jack O’Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, a sadist in flowing blond locks and rotting teeth who rules his clone army of bizarro Jimmys with a charisma that can’t disguise his creepy Caligula-like delight in humiliation and brutal cruelty. Like Remmick, the Irish vampire he portrayed in the Oscar-nominated “Sinners,” Jimmy is the personification of moral rot. And O’Connell plays him with dazzling, scene-stealing depravity.
In a way, Jimmy and Kelson are fighting for the soul of Spike (a terrific Alfie Williams), the lost boy we watched suffer the agony of losing his mother in the previous film. Now, initiated into the debased customs of the Jimmys, Spike participates in ritualistic slaughter of innocents. What happens to one family is a scene best watched between closed fingers.
All this digs deeply into the film’s themes of how much worse the uninfected are as opposed to those changed by the rage virus. Yes, the symbols can feel clanking at times with their Covid and Brexit parallels verging on the obvious. But DaCosta, breaking up the terror with moments of silent, serene beauty, steers her plague ship to harbor with magisterial skill.
“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” will keep you up nights with its blood-freezing, visionary horror, but the images that stick, like one in which Kelson puts a supportive hand on a killer zombie’s shoulder, point to a way ahead that refutes the usual easy nilhilism. The year kicks off with what will certainly be one of 2026’s scariest, savviest fright fests. You’ll be thinking about “The Bone Temple” long after you wake up screaming.