Studio:   Columbia Pictures
Director: Nia DaCosta
Writer:   Alex Garland
Producer: Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice, Bernard Bellew, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland
Stars:    Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry, Emma Laird, Maura Bird, Sam Locke, Robert Rhodes, Ghazi Al Ruffai, Connor Newall

Review Score:

Summary:

A gang of sadistic Satanists escorting a captive boy crosses paths with an eccentric doctor who believes he can cure the viral infection ravaging their country.

Synopsis:

In an abandoned water park, Sir Jimmy Crystal, a psychotic Satanist who believes “Old Nick” is his father and speaks to him in his head, directs his eccentric gang of sadistic followers to initiate Spike, a boy they recently took captive, with a fight to the death. Known as “Fingers” who wear matching blonde wigs and rename themselves “Jimmy,” Jimmy Crystal’s gang includes Jimmy Ink, Jimmy Shite, Jimmy Jones, Jimmy Snake, Jimmy Jimmy, Jimmy Fox, and Jimmima.

In self-defense, Spike stabs Shite in his leg, inadvertently hitting an artery that causes him to bleed to death. Jimmy renames Spike and forces him to become a new Finger.

Still building an ossuary that now includes tall towers of human bones around his memorial monument of skulls, Dr. Ian Kelson attempts to domesticate the alpha infected he named Samson with regular doses of morphine. Seemingly able to convince the savage brute he poses no threat, Kelson and Samson eventually form a docile bond as they continue taking morphine together.

A young man named Tom and his pregnant partner Cathy scavenge a forest with their companion Jonno. When Jonno becomes swarmed by an infected horde, Tom and Cathy race back to the fenced farm where they live with Jane Ji, George, and Matthew. Tom and Cathy are alarmed to discover that while they were gone, Jimmy’s gang took over the farm and now holds everyone hostage.

Threatened with a torturous death, Matthew attempts to fight back against the intruders. Jimmy’s gang takes Matthew, Tom, George, and Jane Ji captive. Cathy manages to escape outside. Afterward, Jimmy sends Ink on a scouting mission where she spies Kelson calmly interacting with Samson at the bone pillars.

From her hiding spot in the farm’s barn, Cathy helplessly watches Jimmy direct his followers in cruelly skinning Matthew, George, and Jane Ji as a Satanic sacrifice. Repulsed by the sickening sight, Spike runs outside to vomit. Returning from the ossuary, Ink expresses sympathy for Spike being unable to participate in their gang’s revolting rituals.

Running low on morphine to keep him sedated, Kelson ponders compassionately euthanizing Samson until Samson unexpectedly mutters the word “moon.” Seeing this spark of humanity restores Kelson’s belief that the Rage Virus might be treatable.

Jimmy forces Tom to fight one of his followers for a chance to join the Fingers. Thinking she looks weakest, Tom chooses Jimmima as his opponent, but he is quickly subdued and pinned to the ground. Before Jimmima can kill Tom, Cathy sends down a hook from her hiding spot in the loft, splitting open Jimmima’s head. In the ensuing commotion, Tom crawls to a gas tank he uses to burn Jimmy Jimmy to death.

With the barn on fire, Cathy escapes through the roof. Jimmy sends Spike to capture her. Instead, Spike begs Cathy to take him with her, but she punches Spike in his stomach and flees.

Upset that Spike failed him, Jimmy announces he will call on Old Nick to tell him how to punish the boy. Instead of hearing Old Nick in his head, Ink suggests that Jimmy should consult Satan in person. Confusing Kelson for Old Nick, Ink explains how she saw a rust-colored man accompanied by a demon in front of piles of bones in the forest. Jimmy agrees they should go there to find out if the man Ink saw truly is Satan.

Jimmy instructs Ink, Spike, Jones, Snake, and Fox to remain hidden while he speaks to Kelson alone. While waiting, Spike tries telling Ink that Kelson is just a man. Ink insists Kelson is Old Nick, although she does question if Jimmy really is Satan’s son like he claims.

Kelson explains to Jimmy how iodine colored his skin as he identifies himself as a doctor, not Old Nick. In discussing their different philosophies, Jimmy tells Kelson how he hears his father Satan in his head, and how he grew up next to a church. Now aware that he is not Old Nick, Jimmy threatens Kelson with death unless he impersonates Satan so Jimmy can renew his followers’ faith in him with a scripted interaction.

Jimmy returns to the others and tells them they will have an audience with Old Nick the next day, but only Jimmy is permitted to speak directly to him. Meanwhile, Kelson attempts to treat Samson’s psychosis with a mix of various medicines.

While the other Fingers continue sleeping, Fox catches Spike trying to sneak away from the gang’s camp. Wanting revenge for his friend Shite’s death, Fox prepares to kill Spike, but Ink saves Spike by killing Fox. Ink returns Spike to Jimmy and claims she killed Fox in self-defense because he was afraid to meet Old Nick and tried to flee.

Kelson wakes the next day to find Samson gone. Regaining some semblance of clarity from Kelson’s drugs, Samson goes to an abandoned train car that unexpectedly triggers a childhood memory. With some of his humanity restored, a horde of infected suddenly attacks Samson once they sense he is no longer like them. Samson fiercely fights his way free from the mob.

At nightfall, Jimmy escorts Spike, Ink, Jones, and Snake to the ossuary. Kelson convinces Jimmy’s remaining followers that he is Old Nick by putting on a theatrical performance filled with fire and Iron Maiden music. As previously instructed by Jimmy, Kelson reluctantly confirms that Jimmy is his son and instructs the Fingers to obey Jimmy’s orders while continuing to skin people and recruit legions of devotees.

Upon recognizing Spike, Kelson has a change of heart. Going off script, Kelson issues an additional command that Jimmy should be crucified by his followers. Ink immediately moves to attack Jimmy. Jimmy stops Ink’s approach by revealing Kelson is an ordinary man, which he proves by suddenly stabbing the doctor.

Claiming he is actually Satan, Jimmy instructs Jones and Snake to kill Ink. Ink kills Jones and Snake in self-defense. With Jimmy distracted, Spike stabs Jimmy in his stomach. Ink then knocks Jimmy to the ground.

Spike and Kelson have a remorseful reunion. Recognizing that Kelson cannot be saved, Ink crucifies Jimmy on a cross hanged upside down in front of the skull pile. Identifying her real name as Kellie, she and Spike then leave the ossuary together.

Samson returns to the ossuary. Jimmy envisions Samson to be Satan. Before Kelson dies from his stab wound, Samson expresses thanks and then carries his body away. Jimmy screams after Samson, asking why his father has forsaken him.

Now living in seclusion, Jim, who came out of a coma 28 days after the initial Rage Virus outbreak, and his daughter Sam hear a commotion in the distance outside their remote home. Through binoculars, they see an infected horde chasing Spike and Kellie. Jim and Sam rush to help.

Review:

Some of the biggest bricks “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” uses to cement itself together are really just reskins of common zombie cliches George A. Romero made famous. Eventually using these typical tropes for atypical purposes, “The Bone Temple” ultimately avoids feeling redundant once it fully pulls ahead of forgettable flicks that wouldn’t dare lose as much weight from undead action to pack on pounds of thematic gravity. Many eyes might not even notice they’re looking at familiar faces and scenarios because of how well basic bones are hidden beneath the fresh flesh of a morally complex story in a realized world whose apocalypse turned out distinctly different from those with walkers, ghouls, or mere corpses that came back to life.

Picking up where “28 Years Later” (review here) left off, “The Bone Temple” starts with Spike, the boy who broke free from his distrusted father in favor of surviving alone, held captive by Sir Jimmy Crystal’s deluded band of merry maniacs. Previously presented as a visually comical collection of Jimmy Savile jokesters sporting tracksuits and matching wigs, Jimmy’s young gang of “Fingers” are now revealed to be sadistic killers who’ve been so bent by living their entire lives in a cut-off country, they believe Jimmy’s claim that he is Satan’s son. When they’re not nonchalantly killing attackers affected by the Rage Virus, they’re devotedly skinning innocents on Jimmy’s orders, which Jimmy supposedly hears in his head from Old Nick himself.

Initially, Jimmy just looks like another Negan. A psycho drunk on the power of fearful admiration, he prefers to play with his food before biting it, tormenting victims with twisted musings while his followers gleefully giggle in suspenseful anticipation of savage slaughter.

Even with drastically different attire, Jimmy’s cruel cult appears identical in intentions to Tom Savini’s “Dawn of the Dead” biker gang, or whatever faction of freaks is terrorizing Daryl Dixon this week. After forcing Spike to become part of their odd outfit, the Fingers force their way into a farm where they immediately make themselves at home by having their run of the place before tying up the occupants for torture.

In the meantime, Ralph Fiennes returns as Kelson, a doctor whose mind might be cracked after so long without his family, but he still believes in maintaining his expanding monument of bones. Kelson also believes, like zombie movie Samaritans always do, that the infected have their humanity hidden somewhere. If only he can come up with a cure, maybe he can make them normal again.

Playing “Day of the Dead’s” Bub to Kelson’s version of Dr. Logan is Samson, the Hulk-sized Alpha also returning from the previous film. In addition to exhibiting inklings of intelligence, Samson is built with the brutishness of “Land of the Dead’s” Big Daddy. By satiating the monstrous man’s morphine addiction, Kelson domesticates Samson as they form a peculiar pair pretending they can enjoy illusory returns to normalcy despite their ravaged reality.

Individually, these separate threads mirror the main beats of similar movies with the same stereotypes and behavior patterns. Dusted in this patina of predictability for its first half, the film feels disinterested in discovering a unique stride, in turn making it challenging to stay connected while backgrounds keep building.

Once these threads intersect though, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” becomes an almost entirely different beast. Suddenly seeming to realize that showing Samson tearing out a spine like he’s performing a Mortal Kombat fatality, or Jimmy’s gang thrusting more blades into someone’s body, isn’t as interesting as exploring why they’re doing these things, the movie takes a sharp turn into increasingly thoughtful territory for a much stronger third act that puts meaning into the madness.

No longer content to present them as plain heroes and villains, “28 Days Later: The Bone Temple” closes the lid on the box of conventions to reshape its main players through intense interactions. Instead of optimistic doctor, disillusioned child, unhinged lunatic, and disciple losing faith, their various conflicts with one another prove them to be unified as tragic figures suffering from several types of insanity in a ruined world with little hope for repair. Unsure what to believe in, whether it’s medicine or a deity, they finally come to confront why they’re even struggling to survive when despair now dominates.

Questioning the volatile value of religion, making uneasy alliances, and compromising one’s core in order to simply exist aren’t direct avenues to epic excitement, so “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” still encounters attention span issues with its patient pace. In places, the movie makes up for its focus on introspection over action by inserting wild sights like Ralph Fiennes putting on a one-man pyrotechnics performance set to Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast.”

At a minimum, “The Bone Temple’s” contemplative character study sparks more interest in seeing where a third film in the proposed “28 Years Later” trilogy might go than the preceding installment inspired in seeing this sequel. It’s still taking a long time to arrive at whatever the final destination may be, but “The Bone Temple” manages to reignite some intrigue with its multilayered personalities who’ve finally moved into more provocative positions in both philosophy and possibilities. In hindsight, maybe the more muted “28 Years Later” had to walk so the more meaningful “The Bone Temple” could run.

Review Score: 75