Ralph Fiennes rocks out in fourth installment of post-apocalyptic survivalist fear-fest freakshow
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman & Chi Lewis-Parry
Directed bt Nia DaCosta
Rated R
In theaters Friday, Jan. 16
Oh, how the days become weeks, and the weeks become years. As in life, that’s what happened with director Danny Boyle’s high-octane 2002 post-apocalyptic horror thriller 28 Days Later, about a rage-inducing virus that brings about complete societal collapse and turns the infected into ghoulish mobs of flesh gobblers.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the fourth in the franchise, and new director Nia DaCosta certainly picks up the bloody baton and runs with it. Lauded British actor Ralph Fiennes reprises his role as Dr. Ian Kelson, a former physician now memorizing victims of the epidemic with a “temple” made from their bones. Things are complicated by the Jimmys, a Teletubbies-loving cult-like crew of survivors known for their gleeful brutality, and wearing ratty blonde wigs to honor their namesake, the late British comedian Jimmy Saville. Led by the satanically sadistic psychopath Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), they reminded me of the Droogs in another British film, Stanley Kubrick’s brilliantly unsettling A Clockwork Orange (1971), only a whole lot nastier.
Alfie Williams returns as a young boy, Spike, also connected to the previous storyline. Chi Lewis-Parry, a former MMA fighter, plays Samson, the—ahem—well-endowed infected pack leader who long ago lost the need for clothes. Can the good Dr. K soothe this savage beast with the calming balm of morphine? Erin Kellyman, so delightful as a college coed alongside June Squibb in Eleanor the Great, and Emma Laird from TV’s Mayor of Kingstown, both play members of the Jimmys. Cillian Murphy, who starred in the original movie, makes a late appearance that helps tie the whole four-film franchise together.
If you’re not already aboard the 28 Days train, you may feel a bit lost jumping on now—and unpleasantly jolted by the spurting blood, the spilling guts and an early scene in which a head gets yanked off, spinal cord and all. It’s all a stylishly bleak horror-show survivalist parable with spasms of explosive violence, a veneer of religious allegory and nods to the fragility of civilization and the human proclivity for self-destructive delusion—and how ‘80s music can survive any apocalypse. Come for the blood and guts, stay for the upside-down crucifixion and Ralph Fiennes rocking out to vintage Iron Maiden, pretending to be Satan and singing along to “The Number of the Beast.”
It won’t be everyone’s cup of mild-mannered movie tea for polite sipping, but if you’re looking to scratch a head-banging zombie itch with a big-screen toast from a goblet of plague-fest freakshow grog, get ready to rock with yet another tale of unhinged terror set in a gritty Brit-centric future that’s a million miles away from Downton Abbey.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 