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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAudiences largely left last June\u2019s zombie threequel \u201c28 Years Later\u201d thinking the same thing, \u201cThat was a good movie, but what the heck was up with that ending?\u201d They were referring to the last-minute saving of young protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) from a hoard of Infected by a gang of blonde-wigged, tracksuit-wearing ruffians led by long-missing earlier character Jimmy (Jack O\u2019Connell). The tone of the sequence was one of stylized action, which clashed with the more ominous, meditative horror (short of the obvious Infected attacks) of the rest of the movie. Now, a mere seven months later, \u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u201d provides answers as to exactly what the heck was up with that ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It turns out that the gang, known as The Fingers (because together they form a mighty fist), while they like to take out the Infected, aren\u2019t much kinder to uninfected humans. They\u2019re a cult of serial killers, all stripped of their original names and now called Jimmy, who serve a Satanic deity known as Old Nick. O\u2019Connell\u2019s leader, now going by the name Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, agrees to take in Spike if he can kill a Jimmy in a battle to the death. Spike lives to be inducted, but he lives in terror. Sadly, that\u2019s his one mode through the entire movie. In \u201c28 Years Later,\u201d the character had a great arc where he abandoned his lying father and safe-haven community to get help for his sick mother and then face an uncertain future, but here he\u2019s just scared all the time. Granted, I\u2019d be consistently scared if I had to spend my life around the vicious Fingers, but it\u2019s not much of a \u201chero\u2019s journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story sometimes breaks from Spike and The Fingers to spend time with Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a character from the last movie who built The Bone Temple, a tall pile of skulls, as a memorial to the dead, and not, as some thought, a collection of weirdo trophies. He subdues an \u201cAlpha Infected,\u201d who he names Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), and takes strides to study him, as there may be something inside his head (psychologically) that may be the key to overcoming not just the Infected, but the 28-year-old infection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the movie is a noticeable step down from \u201c28 Years Later.\u201d Sure, charging Infected and satanic murderers are scary and all, but it\u2019s missing that certain sense of timing and heartfelt touch given to it by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (Nia DaCosta, of the mixed-bag \u201cCandyman\u201d remake, is at the helm this time). That is, until the two stories converge. Once some of The Fingers become convinced that Dr. Kelson is their god Old Nick (thanks to his iodine-coated red skin), Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal has to find a way to keep his own hold on the group. And that\u2019s where the musical number comes in. It\u2019s not Jack O\u2019Connell performing like he did in \u201cSinners,\u201d but there is a show-stealing musical number and a climax that redeems the entire movie\u2026 and then a poorly-kept secret surprise after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u201d can be a slog at times, and by \u201cat times\u201d I mean pretty much the entire first hour. It shouldn\u2019t be a slog, given the high-stakes subject matter, but I could never shake this feeling that I was just watching a lesser version of a world I had spent just enough time in only seven months ago. But then that ending is so explosive that all is forgiven. Supposedly Danny Boyle will be back to direct a fifth movie in this series (my guess is it will be the third with \u201cYears\u201d in the title, to complete the trilogy within the larger continuity), and if he can seamlessly add his sensitive touch to the spectacle of this movie\u2019s most memorable sequence, we\u2019ll have a horror movie for the ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u201d is rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, graphic nudity, language throughout, and brief drug use. Its running time is 109 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver Audiences largely left last June\u2019s zombie threequel \u201c28 Years Later\u201d thinking the same thing, \u201cThat was a good movie, but what the heck was up with… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDFcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDEtMTlUMTY0ODU3LjY0OS53ZWJwP2ZpdD02OTElMkMxMDI0JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTW92aWUgUmV2aWV3ICYjODIxMTsgMjggWWVhcnMgTGF0ZXI6IFRoZSBCb25lIFRlbXBsZSIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImZvbnQiOiIiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNjMwNDA2NjF9.83l1kC0hHt_xIrLZRi_KNmngTGPwgE59gc-gPc1zGbEMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":61294,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-2026-01-19T164857.649.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[13257],"class_list":["post-61293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review-28-years-later-the-bone-temple"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61295,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61293\/revisions\/61295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}