28 Years Later: The Bone Temple review — Ralph Fiennes is unleashed in zombie horror

Gosh, I hope that Ralph Fiennes’s back is OK. Because the 63-year-old certainly did a lot of heavy lifting in this latest instalment of the long-running zombie franchise. I mean that metaphorically, of course, because in this movie it’s up to Fiennes to provide the emotional, intellectual and comedic fireworks.

Without Fiennes there is barely any of the audacious subtext that made last year’s Danny Boyle-directed 28 Years Later such a dizzying cultural feat. That was an ostensible zombie flick, remember, that also gorged itself on references to Rudyard Kipling’s Boots, Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, archive First World War footage, the St George’s Cross, Abide with Me, the Falklands conflict and Brexit, and all swirling together with Boyle’s trademark maximalist style. It was a blood-soaked fever dream about an urgent battle between two kinds of modern English identity: the insular and the outward-looking.

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That is all gone now. Taking over from Boyle, the American director Nia DaCosta, who made the 2021 Candyman reboot, has diverted almost all the attention on to Fiennes. He was introduced in the previous film as the GP Dr Ian Kelson, who is covered with orange iodine, which repels the Rage virus. Kelson is determined to find a cure for the infected while based inside a fabulously artistic ossuary that’s constructed from the skeletons of the recently deceased. Strangely, the strategy of focusing on him really works.

Fiennes’s commitment is so total that it occasionally feels as if The Bone Temple is a riveting and vivacious one-man West End show, one that features long sequences of Fiennes dancing madly to Duran Duran, Fiennes nailing hilarious one-liners, Fiennes reflecting sadly on the impermanence of life, and Fiennes stripping off for some zany full-frontal nudity. Yes, shocker. Fiennes hasn’t done a full-frontal nude scene since way way back in, hmm, when was it, oh yes, last year, in The Return. Dude, clothes are fine too.

The film begins almost immediately after the controversial climax of the previous outing, with the arrival of Jack O’Connell’s psychotic avenger, Lord Jimmy Crystal, and his squad of teenage Jimmys. The incendiary gag here was that the gang, dressed in tracksuits and blond Prince Valiant wigs, are Jimmy Savile cos-players, reflecting a self-hating society that has ultimately, and very literally, eaten itself. That specific analogy now dissipates, and though the gang’s catchphrase is the Savile-inspired “Howzat!” (for Savile’s “How’s about that then?”), the national scar of Savile gradually gives way to a vague and non-specific discussion of evil, and the devil, and the worldwide impact of nastiness.

CTMG, Inc./Miya Mizuno

Still, the Jimmys travel through northern England killing the infected and torturing innocent civilians, much like the precocious kiddie mobsters in RoboCop 2 but with an extra dollop of extreme 18-certificate violence (you have been warned), until they eventually encounter Dr Kelson. Fabulously, he has until then mainly been getting high on morphine with the “alpha” zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) and enjoying some louche boogies to the aforementioned Eighties pop sensations while inching ever closer to an invaluable zombie antidote.

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There’s a lovely leisurely pace to these scenes, as if the movie, like Kelson, is also baked on morphine and relishing the joys of easy monologues and the dreamy beats of Ordinary World. O’Connell is powerful too as the prime Jimmy. As he did in Sinners, he finds sympathetic notes in a character who might have otherwise been all cardboard villainy.

The film climaxes with the inevitable clash of Kelson and Jimmy Crystal, aka another chance for Fiennes to tap his rock star mojo in a lip-syncing musical masterclass. Writhing along to Iron Maiden in fright make-up while seemingly possessed, he’s like Voldemort on crystal meth and gamely brings the entire proceedings to cheering, whooping ecstasy (at least at my screening). A vacation has been well earned.
★★★★☆
18, 109min
In cinemas from Jan 14

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