28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

Once again, the film considers how society might have evolved over the nearly three decades since the virus, but where '28 Years Later' was more concerned with the practical and ethical questions of such a world, 'The Bone Temple' is more concerned with the spiritual. It all comes back to the prologue of '28 Years Later', with a young Jimmy Crystal watching his pastor father embrace the apocalypse before him. In the face of such horror, it makes sense to ask "why?" - why did this happen, is there some greater design, are we being punished for this, why did we survive when others didn't - questions that science seems insubstantial to answer. Rather than turning to God and Heaven for answers, Jimmy turns (one could say, logically) to Satan and Hell. After all, the world around him has become a Hell on earth. What he and his Fingers have seen is worse than the mind can imagine. As an act of control, it then makes sense to create a kingdom of violence that exceeds even that of the Infected, to be greater than the monsters themselves. They justify it as mercy or charity, but in truth, it is barbarism and sadism. If religion, on some level, is about control, then Jimmy wields it like a surgeon's scalpel.

What makes Jimmy and his Fingers all the more disturbing are the rituals and mythologies they have constructed around themselves. It was great fun seeing Garland and Boyle introduce the Teletubbies into this series, or imagine a world where Jimmy Savile hadn't been convicted, but in 'The Bone Temple', they develop such iconography into unsettling subversions, something as stupid as a kid's dance becoming a horrifying danse macabre. The centrepiece sequence of the second act - Jimmy and his Fingers enacting a gift of "Charity" - is as horrifying as anything in the series, on par with the final act of '28 Days Later', and neither Garland nor DaCosta gives us (or Spike) the slightest chance to look away. In this land of the dead, the evil that will inherit is not the evil you expect.

This might explain why Boyle chose not to direct 'The Bone Temple'. Where '28 Years Later' shimmers with the kind of sentiment we associate so strongly with him, 'The Bone Temple' is a much more aggressive, bleak, nihilistic film. It might have been hard for him to find his way into it. Having another director step in was a cause for anxiety for fans (especially with how frustrating '28 Weeks Later' was), but Nia DaCosta makes all the right choices stepping in. She doesn't attempt to replicate Boyle's idiosyncratic style, instead letting the stillness and patience of Garland's screenplay lead the way and finding her own artistic voice within the series. Her relationship with the violence is far more uncompromising, forcing us to sit in moments so unnerving that you almost beg for them to end, but also extending that patience to the more subtle, emotional beats of the film.

This is especially important with Kelson and Samson. Finding a "cure" for the infection could be lazy storytelling, but the path towards this is tender and unexpected. We're still stuck in that state of anxiety, sure that Samson is going to turn and attack, but we're also caught in Kelson's inherent belief in humanity, a humanity he is convinced must still be somewhere inside this creature. The genius of what Garland does here is that what Kelson lands on is not a cure but an alternative, a quelling of primal urges awoken, asking questions of the virus that lead to logical conclusions. This picks up on the thread started in '28 Years Later', one of its best - that the Infected have now evolved into their own species, and that the most humane way to live with them is to consider them as such.

This forms the crux of the conflict in 'The Bone Temple', that between the urge to commit acts of violence and the choice to do so. Samson and Jimmy are the two sides of this, one unable to control his urges and the other choosing consciously, maliciously to inflict pain on others. If '28 Years Later' was, at its heart, about the choice to treat death with dignity, then here, perhaps the choice is to treat life with dignity as well. The consequences for acts of violence are not societal or institutional but spiritual; the understanding of oneself as a part of the world around them, that's all we have left.

Once again, the series has delivered another far more nuanced, considered and potent experience than anyone could have expected. It's really telling that it's able to offer all the gory, fun aspects of a horror film we love alongside rich, powerful storytelling that works with and enhances those tropes. The two things don't need to be siloed off as separate entities within the same film (like the way the god-awful 'Weapons' did last year). They're in conversation with one another, woven together into the same cloth. For Garland, this is resulting in some of his finest work as a writer, an act of world-building that only seems to get richer and an emotionally-driven narrative as surprising for its tenderness as for its brutality.

Praise should again be given to DaCosta for her intelligent and passionate direction, not burdening it with flashes of bravura but focusing in on the characters and their arcs. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt ('Widows') takes a far more traditional visual approach than Anthony Dod Mantle's revelatory work on '28 Days Later' and '28 Years Later', but this works to the film's advantage, giving it a lush, classical quality. There are certainly bursts of wonderful chaos there, but both Bobbitt and DaCosta know where this film needs to depart from its predecessors. The same can be said for the sharp, considered editing from Jake Roberts ('Civil War') and the haunting score from Hildur Guðnadóttir (TV's 'Chernobyl'), a much more subtle companion to Young Fathers' inventive score for '28 Years Later'.

To some extent, the decision to hold steady with the aesthetic approach makes sense with the important connective tissue between the films - Garland's writing (something '28 Weeks Later' didn't have) and the cast. If I were to have one complaint about the film, it's that Alfie Williams takes more of a backseat here, though you can almost forgive the film for this. Spike isn't really the right character to explore ideas of faith and the nature of violence through, and being shot back-to-back, they may have just not realised how tremendous he would be in '28 Years Later'. That said, any time Spike was in danger in this film, I wanted to run at the screen and grab him and pull him to safety, so continually affecting is Williams in these films.

Instead, 'The Bone Temple' becomes a grand stage for its two polestars, Ralph Fiennes and Jack'O'Connell. Fiennes was truly wonderful in the previous film, and he's given even more space to shine here. It's as if something in him has been let loose, finding a spontaneity and a freedom we rarely get to see from him. His performance is so quiet, so tender, so genuine, and then Garland and DaCosta give him something truly mind-blowing for the final act. His performance in these films ranks amongst his best work.

And if the last 12 months can be credited for anything, it's for the shockingly overdue ascension of Jack O'Connell. He was such a delight in 'Sinners', but now taking centre stage, his performance as Sir Jimmy Crystal is a kind of masterclass in holding an audience on the edge of their seats. Every moment of his performance crackles with wit, humour, charm and incredible danger, more so than any Infected. He and Fiennes, in their few scenes together, absolutely crackle against one another, two opposing forces in a nerve-wracking dance. Surely this means great things for O'Connell, finally given the chance to show what he is capable of.

Special mention should also be made to Chi Lewis-Parry, who has perhaps the hardest job in the film, navigating Samson's character arc. There's always a risk that it won't work, that the slightest slip will fall into cliché, and yet there's something so genuine and human about his performance. One key sequence, carried entirely by Lewis-Parry, is one of the film's most powerful and inventive. Truth be told, though, there isn't a weak link in this cast, even down to the smallest role. With Garland's tremendous script and DaCosta's assured direction, everyone shines amongst the gore.

With '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple', this series is shaping up to be a true rarity in horror cinema, the only one that gets better with each new entry. It's also becoming Alex Garland's magnum opus, a stunning synthesis of all his best qualities as a writer and an observer of human nature. If 'The Bone Temple' lags just behind '28 Years Later', this is only really due to the surprise of the other film. Here, the relief is that Nia DaCosta has furthered the bar set by Danny Boyle, that Garland has continued to expand this world and its fascinating characters, and that it hasn't lost the inherent human core that made '28 Days Later' and '28 Years Later' so remarkable. One can only hope, pray, that they'll be able to bring their trilogy to a close, especially with 'The Bone Temple' delivering another surprising, tantalising coda. With much relief and even greater excitement, '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' has started off the film year of 2026 with a bang.