‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’: A relentless sequel

This sequel within Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic zombie franchise ‘28 Years Later’, a twist on the ‘undead’ prompted by the Rage virus, seeks to increment the blood, guts and gore factor, and does it in style. ‘28 Years Later’ may not have been a great horror flick, but it had its moments.

This film is an opening act for newbie director Nia DaCosta. The story continues with Boyle as producer and Alex Garland as the writer. This is a survival horror-thriller where almost everyone meets with a gory, grisly end.

This film opens soon after the previous film concludes. The narrative begins in a dilapidated water park. Spike (Alfie Williams), the young adventurer from ‘28 Years’, is forced to join the Jimmys, a street gang led by a psychotic Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). Jimmys appears to be modelled after the cult the celebrity-turned-sex offender Jimmy Savile built. The Jimmys believe they are carrying out Satan’s mission, with Crystal considering himself to be Old Nick/Satan’s son and heir.

Meanwhile, Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) continues to track the new “alpha” strain of mutants, concerned about a particularly aggressive male he calls Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). Crystal and the doctor are on a collision course. The resultant is savage, fierce and feral, much more hard-hitting than anything we’ve seen in the franchise so far.

We see the signboard ‘No Children Beyond This Point’; it’s a warning to the audience that what is to come is certainly nothing to kid about. Repeated riotous scenes of flesh-eating carnage are proof. Highly tense moments, jump scares, visceral grosses keep you on the edge of your seats. This movie revels in its world of violence.

Written by Alex Garland, who expands on the ‘28 Years Later’ story with bloody brutality and outright sadism, this film horrifies with almost gleeful setups of gore. There’s plenty of blood-letting orchestrated to a darker, grislier rhythm. That, in fact, contributes tremendous punch to a terrific climax. The involvement of cults in meaner, weirder, bolder, more focused form lends tremendous bite to a familiar story.

O’Connell and Fiennes are first rate. Fiennes commands the screen with a performance of haunting relevance while Jack O’Connell plays Sir Jimmy Crystal, a sick, delusional psychopath with terrifying conviction. Alfie Williams and Chi Lewis-Parry are also pretty effective in their respective roles.

This film is strongly atmospheric and immersive. It’s a relentlessly unsettling, bleak, oppressive psychological thriller that manages to cohere dark satire with ritualistic unease.