Nia DaCosta “28 Years later: The Bone Temple” (2025)
At the end of the first film in this trilogy, we saw young Spike (Alfie Williams) being rescued by a cult-like group of thugs led by a self-styled messiah from zombie-like people infected by a mystery virus. This self-styled messiah, “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) forces Spike to fight one of his followers, The Fingers, in a death match as part of his initiation into the group. Spike wins the fight and becomes an unwilling cult member forced to participate in a never-ending series of raids on other human communities, subjecting them to sadistic violence and murder, at the behest of his new master. In one such raid on an isolated farm, Jimmy Crystal orders his followers to tie up the people there and skin them alive. Spike leaves the scene in disgust and one of Jimmy Crystal’s acolytes, Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman) takes pity on Spike and follows him out. While they are gone, mayhem unexpectedly breaks out: one of the farm’s inhabitants, Cathy, has managed to escape and hide in the barn and exacts vengeance on The Fingers by killing one of them. While JC (see what I did there!) orders the other Fingers to search for her, Cathy’s compatriot Tom sets the barn on fire, killing another Finger and burning down the barn. JC and two of his followers escape but everyone else is not so lucky.
In the meantime, Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) befriends an infected man (Chi Parry-Lewis) whom he names Samson. Addicted to the morphine Kelson treats him with to calm his rages, Samson keeps returning to Kelson and his ossuary of human bones; in a calm state, Samson starts to regain his memory, to cover himself and to forage for berries. After hearing Samson utter the word “moon” while gazing upwards at the night sky and seeing a perfectly round full moon, Kelson considers treating Samson and after much research, discovers a possible treatment for his rages.
Their numbers low, JC threatens to kill Spike for not killing Cathy and letting her run away. Frustrated with JC, Jimmy Ink suggests they visit Kelson, whom she believes is Satan (JC’s god) after having seen him from afar dancing with Samson. The group sets off in search of Kelson and quickly find him. Discovering that Kelson is not Satan, JC threatens to kill him as well.
In contrast to the first film “… The Bone Temple” is a straightforward tale balancing two parallel stories, one of compassion and unexpected hope, the other of nihilism, psychosis and unrelieved violence and suffering. Spike learns the hard way of the consequences of making choices, though had he not originally thrown his lot in with JC’s group, he might not still be alive. Here, Spike acts as an observer, the action now dominated by JC and Kelson: the tragedy here is that we know JC is that young boy we saw in the prologue to the first film, witnessing his family being killed by zombies and being saved only because he hid in a church. What has led this deeply traumatised boy to become a deranged sociopath, choosing to worship Satan rather than a God who has apparently failed to save him and his family, remains in the realm of speculation. Where JC falls headlong into despair, nihilism, self-interest and violence for its own sake to appease the voices in his head, and ultimately pays a heavy price for his beliefs and cynicism, the parallel tale of Kelson and Samson, reaching out to each other through the unlikely spectre of morphine addiction, speaks of tolerance, empathy and understanding, and ultimately hope in a world that now desperately needs such qualities.
Fiennes and O’Connell dominate the scenery with their opposed characters and antics, Fiennes’s Kelson with his calm demeanour, belief in science and rationality (and his eclectic taste in music, running from Duran Duran to Iron Maiden), and O’Connell’s Jimmy Crystal with his unstable psychotic and narcissistic behaviour. The rest of the cast do as much as they can with the screen time they have, though Chi Parry-Lewis is impressive in his wordless portrayal of Samson’s inner struggle to remember and retain his humanity against the virus. His final scene with Kelson is perhaps the most moving in a highly intense part of the film.
While fans of zombie films might be disappointed that the zombies feature more as wallpaper than as a significant threat, and the real monsters happen to be flawed humans, “… The Bone Temple” does pose an interesting philosophical question about how humans might survive in extreme post-apocalyptic circumstances and how, even in a context where despair, greed, superstition and nihilist beliefs flourish, there can be co-operation, community and hope for recovery and a better way of living.