28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - Ralph Fiennes Goes Bananas in the latest 'Rage' Movie
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B+
Werner Herzog, talking about directing Nicolas Cage in Port of Call: New Orleans, said that, instead of “Action,” he’d yell, “Release the pig!”
Ralph Fiennes gets to release the pig big-time in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the fourth movie in the series that started with 2002’s sort-of-zombie movie 28 Days Later. It offers the legendary actor the opportunity to shed his gravitas and literally dance his way to madness to tunes by Duran Duran and Iron Maiden.
He is clearly having insane fun with the role of hermit “Rage Virus Doctor” Ian Kelson, a character who was only introduced in the last act of last year’s 28 Years Later. He was the icing on the cake of a well-conceived let’s-suppose movie from director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland that envisioned a U.K. that was quarantined by the world, a generation after said virus had advanced beyond control there.
In The Bone Temple, his madness is the feature attraction. It’s not the only story to be told in this continuation of the tale of Spike (Alfie Williams), a boy who’d fled his island village to try to save his dying mother. But without it, this film would be little more than a narrative place holder.
Garland is still on board as the writer, but Nia DaCosta steps in, in place of Boyle (who now produces), staying fairly true to the template of his pacing.
When we last saw Spike, he’d left the confines of Dr. Kelson’s “bone temple,” (an ossuary of bones that had piled up over decades, despite his ongoing attempts to find a cure for the Rage Virus). And he’d been adopted by a roving band of punks in tracksuits who’d saved him from a stand-off with “the Infected.” Their leader was Jimmy (Jack O'Connell), a character we’d first met as a child in a flashback in the film’s opening scene.
Good news so far. But The Bone Temple wastes no time in letting us know that The Jimmys (everyone is called Jimmy) makes the Manson family look like the Flanderses. It’s a club you’ve got to kill to get into, and presumably kill to get out of.
As for Jimmy Crystal, the boss, he claims to be the son of “Old Nick,” a.k.a. Satan, doing Dad’s work.
The Jimmys wander and slaughter with only a few showing signs of trepidation at their gory work.
And though this sounds like a provocative subplot, it actually has a tendency to make The Bone Temple seem like just another torture porn horror movie. Think The Strangers or any other wandering-bunch-of-psychos film.
But meanwhile, back in the Bone Temple, there’s a little more imagination, and even humour, in play. Dr. Kelson remains fascinated with Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), an “Alpha” Infected behemoth who has become accustomed to hanging around the ossuary (another character we met in 28 Years Later, and the first major infected character we get to “know”).
Though Samson is still dangerous, Dr. Kelson begins a frankly reckless series of experiments that involve things like doping Samson with morphine, indulging a little himself, and having them share stoned experiences like, y’know, buds.
Both actors have fun with these sequences, and they cement Dr. Kelson’s obsessive and explorative mentality that motivates him to still seek a cure after decades of failure amid his pile of bones.
Invariably these two stories will entwine, with the atheist doctor meeting the Satanist cult leader. No spoilers, but there is a climactic scene that is worth the price of admission.
The 28 Days/Years series has reached that inevitable point in zombie apocalypses (again, I know they’re not really zombies), where the zombies are no longer the top threat, and the real antagonists are human.
It’s a new apocalyptic pallet to paint upon, and I look forward to where it goes next.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Directed by Nia DaCosta. Written by Alex Garland. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Alfie Williams and Jack O’Connell. In theatres January 15.