28 Years Later: The Bone Temple: the zombie franchise rolls on, fuelled by blood, guts and Duran Duran

After the abundantly strange 28 Years Later, this is a conventional franchise instalment: second, third, or fourth depending on your point of view, continuing, concluding, and setting up, without being entirely satisfactory on its own account. The ‘actual’ second 28 Days Later film, 28 Weeks Later (2007), has been semi-disowned on account of the effective non-involvement of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, authors of the 2002 original – hence the possibility of seeing Bone Temple as the third film – but that had the virtue of opening up the franchise’s world in a way that Bone Temple does not. Shot back-to-back with its immediate predecessor, with Nia DaCosta taking over from Boyle as director, it uses the same or similar locations: the bone temple itself, but also the train and various other Northumbrian sites not markedly different from the ones we saw last year; but not Lindisfarne, with the effect of contraction rather than expansion. 

We pick up where we left off, with young Spike (Alfie Williams) being inducted into a gang of tracksuited, bewigged survivors all called Jimmy, led by the dangerously charismatic Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), rapidly revealed as the film’s villain. Obviously though not explicitly styled on Jimmy Savile, he is also a Satanist, and so the Jimmies spend their time not foraging for food or building defences or making children’s wishes come true but killing other survivors with extreme sadism. Zombies, in general, take a back seat; but one, an Alpha dubbed Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), becomes a central character over on the film’s parallel track, which resumes the tale of Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), the bone temple’s creator, who, having drugged Sansom, eventually trains him not to tear his head off. Ultimately, the two narrative lines meet, whereupon O’Connell winningly states the premise out loud: so, you’re the atheist and I’m the Satanist. 

The “Jimmies” arc is misjudged: zombies tearing people’s heads off for entertainment is one thing, prolonged graphic human-on-human torture another. Moreover, the Jimmy Savile bit, as well as the Jimmies’ frequent references to Teletubbies (1997-2001), are somehow reminiscent of bad stand-up comedy, coasting on shared recognition of something naff, and nothing more (not that it is clear how these youngsters would have known of Jimmy Savile). If the idea is that these things are especially revealing of British culture, an idea is all it remains. On the other hand, and at some risk of self-contradiction, Bone Temple’s embrace of another well-worn signifier of Naff Britannia, Duran Duran, apparently Dr Kelson’s favourite band, is practically the film’s highlight. Ordinary World on its own would be on-the-nose, two Duran tracks more promising, but three is inspired.  

Dr Kelson was introduced in the previous film as a madman, one of Garland’s Colonel Kurtz figures, an impression only somewhat dispelled by the film’s conclusion. After all, notwithstanding his progressive views on assisted dying, Kelson’s main enterprise seems to have been constructing a huge temple out of human bones; indeed, the two things together are what makes his character interesting. In this film, though, there is little doubt about it: Kelson is the embodiment of science, wisdom, and, as luck would have it, c. 2002 morality. Fiennes is a delight, playing for laughs his Prospero-and-Caliban relationship with Sansom, which culminates deliriously in a dance sequence set to Duran Duran’s Rio. This is only the first and more understated of two dance sequences for Fiennes, who is forced by O’Connell to impersonate the devil himself in order to subdue his restless gang of worshippers.   

Fiennes does the right thing, not only by Sansom but by Spike. Still, though, the bone temple is odd. Kelson’s explanation is that it’s a memento mori: remember you must die, it says. In the circumstances, with death around every corner, this brings to mind a line from one of the characters in Muriel Spark’s novel Memento Mori, who says. “My memory is failing in certain respects. I am gone eighty-six. But somehow I do not forget my death, whenever that will be.” Of course, the injunction means more than this; it is meant to condition how we act, and (as in Spark’s novel) it is not easily separable from the Christian tradition. For Kelso, however, morality happily coincides with instinct, and the film seems to agree with him; but perhaps the sheer macabre excess of the bone temple tells its own discordant story. 

 ► 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in UK cinemas now.