28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE (2026)

 "Let he, who hath understanding, reckon the number of the beast;

For it is a human number...." - Sir Bruce Dickinson.

So, I got put in the Iron Maiden (Excellent!) easily first great film of the year!

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple asks some giant questions: What does it mean to be swallowed into a cult?  What does it mean to have compassion for someone who seems to be totally beyond the pale of help? 

These might daunt or not even occur to other writers or filmmakers in the, yeah, we can call them "zombies" even as they are adjacent and we discover in this entry they have a true psychosis; but Alex Garland has had a lot of time to think about the world he created so long ago (which if part 3 is out by 2030 then the title will be most accurate) and in this, also directed with a giant embrace of the gnarly and unnerving turns Garland's script takes by Nia DaCosta, he actually does explore the power of evil and how there should be, or will be, some kind of force in the world like Dr. Ian Kelson to stand firm on what is right or just... ethical!

While I did enjoy the previous entry that saw Boyle and Garland re-team to explore what in any imagination but in some kind of rationality the surviving humanity on the English Isle would be like decades after an apocalyptic event duch as this, it was also at times too convenient with certain characters and how they could/would operate (ie Jodie Comer's mother of Spike, played here again by Alfie Williams and still very convincing as a kid who has courage while also trying not to shit himself as we all might) or was just too insane even for this world (the baby was... huh). There was a lot to admire while at the same time room for (from my perspective) improvement on making us care a little more about the characters and where they were headed.

Bone Temple keeps the stakes much simpler by honing in on two characters and storylines that need to converge and eventually do: Jack O'Connell as the "Son of Nick" aka Satan and his band of killers who dispatch any civilians in their path as "Charity" cases (unless one manages to become a Jimmy in a trial by combat situation), and Dr. Kelson and his experiments on the nom-de-plume Samson, the Alpha Male literal Big Swinging Dick from the last film he experiments on with Morphine and other drugs to find a possible cure. 

There are of course influences galore that one can trace back to - the whole "we can change you" medical experiments of Day of the Dead are seen here (not uncoincidentally this is *Garland's third script in this series as he didn't pen Weeks) and, I should note I got this from Mark Kermode in his review, A Clockwork Orange to an extent with what a Master does to his gang to keep them in line (and, of course, Manson).

What matters the most here and the foundation for what makes the movie work is that we believe these characters and how especially DaCosta gets such rich and textured performances from O'Connell and Fiennnes. 

It might even be all too easy to connect the former to his other Grand Guignol performance last year in Sinners, also a leader of a cult of a kind that does his bidding *or else,* except in this there is maybe even more dare I say for O'Connell to play as the layers of his line of bull about Nick and Satan are pulled away (his conversation with Fiennes midway through when the movie slows down a bit is a highlight for how both men come to a... understanding of what comes next). 

Meanwhile there is the physicality of Fiennes work along with Chi Lewis Perry as Samson - notice just how much his performance is in his eyes and how he reacts the more his high sense of the world goes into... something else.  Fiennes in general is just tremendous in this performance because he makes Ian such a calm and formidable and reasonable presence in a world where all of that is lost.

Garland and DaCosta keep the characters so vital and the pacing of the story so engaging - never too fast but I wouldn't know when you would want to get up to use the loo, like what if you miss the "Rio" needle drop - that the violence and grisly gore is more earned than even in the last entry. 

This does not have the most action of the series, but it does have the most intense bodily mutilation and all of that, such as what we see as torture and how things unfold into such horrific ways, and we do care about how all of that comes off (and sometimes it is darkly funny, like how Spike almost by accident gets "initiated" early on) because we care about who is going to do what or what Jimmy "Crystal" will do when he discovers the next betrayal among his ranks.

More than anything, it is impressive to me how Garland, by leaps and bounds with a sharper edge and clearer satirical sensibility than, say, Civil War, taps into the fears of today. There is the obvious example I don't even need to mention here, but the past decade or longer has shown us what happens when someone can latch on to a position of power and exploit it for dominance and purposes totally self-serving. At the same time there are those people who are (forgive the Mr. Rogers allusion here) the helpers who will do what it takes to actually keep humanity on a path of stability (or if you need it more obviously spelled out, Science vs Superstition).

While the movie gives the audience a lot of harrowing shocks and over the top musical cues, this is like the first 28 Days Later about how humanity can come together or crash and fall - and the specificity brought to the characters and overpowering production design - and that hits so well.  Or, to add one more point to this: it is so satisfying when you see all of the moving parts in a story assembled so clearly and, within the nasty dimensions established here, it unfolds to where the suspense kicks you in the ass. 

At the end of the day, Bone Temple is about who humanity can be - all while rocking out to Maiden and in the hands of a director and production team that keep your hand ready to grip the seat lining off.  

(*his best since Annihilation IMO)