28 Years Later: The Bone Temple blends poetic scenes with prolonged brutality

According to Time, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, written by Alex Garland and directed by Nia DaCosta, delivers moments of earnest poetry and entertainment but is undermined by prolonged, sadistic violence. The film was shot back-to-back with Danny Boyle’s 2025 28 Years Later and the two reportedly merge into a fairly graceful whole.

Alfie Williams returns as 12-year-old Spike, whose mother is terminally ill and who is taken under the wing of the loner physician Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a man who studies the infected and builds towering memorials of bleached bones. Kelson tends an injured zombie he names Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) and discovers that some infected retain human memories.

Jack O'Connell plays Jimmy Crystal, a charismatic psychopath who leads a gang of lookalike teenage followers and tests Spike by forcing him into brutal initiation rites; the group, called the “seven fingers,” commits acts including skinning victims alive. The reviewer says director Nia DaCosta and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle craft tension and striking visuals, but the prolonged sadism—described as fetishized and bordering on torture porn—often overpowers the film’s quieter, more poetic passages.

Key Topics

Culture, Alex Garland, Nia Dacosta, Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'connell