28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

In the latest instalment, 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE, yound director Nia DaCosta takes over directing duties from Boyle and turns her attention to the darker side of human nature. As in the previous film, the horrors she uncovers feel uncomfortably close to the present. Is a zombie apocalypse really all that separates us from such a world?

DaCosta returns to the characters introduced in Boyle’s 28 YEARS LATER. She follows young Spike (Alfie Williams), who leaves the safety of his home only to fall in with a psychopathic gang led by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). “Sir Lord” Crystal believes Satan himself to be his father and, in his name, proves capable of atrocities even worse than those committed by the infected. Before long, the sadistic group, with Spike now drawn into its ranks, comes across the bone temple of Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who is on the verge of a discovery that could transform the future.

Although joining another franchise initially seemed risky to the director of THE MARVELS, it was Jonathan Glazer himself who encouraged DaCosta to take on 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE. Fortunately, Boyle gave her considerable creative freedom, and she makes full use of it, working from Garland’s assured screenplay. The result is the cinematic equivalent of heavy metal, a genre the film embraces outright in a sequence set to The Number of the Beast: uncompromising, intense and stripped of all reverence. That spirit runs through not only the music but the imagery, as DaCosta’s film positively drips with chilling symbolism. The result is a harrowing, brutal and meticulously crafted exploration of the nature of evil – though decidedly not for the faint-hearted.

‍

Text: Michał Sołtysek