​DaCosta visits ‘The Bone Temple’

By Greg Carlson

The versatile Nia DaCosta follows her underseen and underappreciated “Hedda” (one of my 2025 favorites) with the first female-helmed entry in the 28 Days/Weeks/Years Later series, a fascinating and grisly memento mori called “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Featuring a mesmerizing performance by an all-in Ralph Fiennes, reprising his role as Dr. Ian Kelson, DaCosta’s violent, vicious, and bloody chapter also brims with intelligence, visual beauty and even a measure of unexpected grace in the unlikeliest of places. Alex Garland’s re-imagining of George Romero’s foundational and groundbreaking modern ghouls as fast-moving, zombie-like marauders infected by the Rage Virus continues to surprise and delight genre fans, no mean feat in one of horror’s most overworked categories.

Inaugurated in 2002 by the formidable team of screenwriter Garland, director Danny Boyle, and producer Andrew Macdonald, the saga today feels even more terrifyingly parallel to the unsafe, precipice-of-disaster dystopian hellscape currently tormenting American citizens. “The Bone Temple” takes place in the incongruously lush valleys and rolling hills of Northern England. The rural location of the Yorkshire Dales provides both budgetary relief as well as a striking contrast to city-set films. The title structure, hauntingly introduced in the previous chapter, plays an even bigger role this time, serving as the site of the climactic showdown between Kelson and the Jimmy Savile-inspired cult/gang leader Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, the sadistic killer played to perfection by Jack O’Connell with the same degree of chilling commitment he brought to Irish vampire Remmick in “Sinners.”

Young Spike (Alfie Williams), now caught in the teeth of reluctant membership in Lord Jimmy’s merciless crew, must comply with awful instructions as a matter of survival. Spike’s experiences continue to be presented as the locus of audience identification, even though Kelson arguably takes over as the central protagonist of the new installment. Alongside Spike as one of Lord Jimmy’s seven “fingers” is Erin Kellyman’s Jimmy Ink, whose sensitivity to Spike’s plight sets her apart from the rest of the thugs eager to flay and slay any unfortunates who come into contact with the deranged scavengers. Jimmy Ink’s willingness to defy Lord Jimmy keeps the viewer invested by reminding us that anything could happen at any moment.

Kelson’s relationship with the hulking, infected Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) arrives at a surprising conclusion. In one of the movie’s most poignant scenes, we learn that the supply of morphine and antipsychotics used by the physician to calm the dangerous Alpha is quickly running out. Amidst the downward spiral toward abject hopelessness, a small glimmer of light shines: Could Kelson’s drug cocktail be a roadmap to a Rage Virus cure? Even though Fiennes will soon have the opportunity to pull out the stops, the calm tenderness with which he communicates with Samson paints his character in subtle shades.

Kelson’s devotion to the construction of the title necropolis suggests the simultaneous presence of madness and the radical act of warding off despair. The irony and paradox of human mortality versus transcendent eternal life manifests in Kelson’s project, a monument of a piece with the real-life locations written about and photographed by Paul Koudounaris in his definitive 2011 book “Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses.” The Bone Temple attracts the attention of Lord Jimmy, leading to a tour de force Black Mass parody underscored by Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” in one of contemporary horror’s most enthralling set pieces. 

Reach HPR film critic Greg Carlson at gregcarlson1@gmail.com.