“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” brings a fresh twist to zombie movies, even with dancing to '80s hits by Duran Duran. Directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Alex Garland, this fourth entry in the franchise mixes dark humor and horror, says Associated Press critic Mark Kennedy. It picks up where 2025's “28 Years Later” left off.
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Here are some tipsThe World in PicturesCalifornia wants to mix hydrogen with gas to cut climate pollution. Critics say that poses risksFewer Americans sign up for Affordable Care Act health insurance as costs spikeAt-home STD tests offer new options for screening and treatment'Worst in Show' CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbellsThis beef taco recipe from the cookbook 'Plantas' uses salsa for seasoning the meatPriest by day, DJ by night: Padre Guilherme's rave in Beirut draws cheers and controversyEntertainmentThis image released by Sony Pictures shows Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Jack O’Connell, center, in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Jack O’Connell in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Chi Lewis-Parry in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Chi Lewis-Parry, left, and Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Jack O’Connell, center, in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Jack O’Connell, center, in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Jack O’Connell in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Jack O’Connell in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Chi Lewis-Parry in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Chi Lewis-Parry in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Chi Lewis-Parry, left, and Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” This image released by Sony Pictures shows Chi Lewis-Parry, left, and Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” never seem to have enough of? Dancing. They’ve got gore and screaming and lots of guttural snarling, but no boogie. That all changes with “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” and the dancing here is to — naturally off-kilter — 1980s heroesThe fourth entry in an ever-more engrossing franchise is absolutely bonkers — and a triumph. It mixes dark, queasy disembowelment and laugh-out-loud humor in a way that both subverts the genre and leads a way out of it, too.— directed by Danny Boyle — left off. If this is your first encounter with the series, you don’t necessarily need to go back to 2002’s “28 Days Later” but at least to last year’s entry. Garland’s script crackles with jokes about Britain’s National Health Service and “Teletubbies” as it sets up an ultimate showdown between good and evil across a flower-and-meadow countryside. DaCosta is fabulous, leaning into the dark and the light with assurance, nailing the twisted tone and celebrating the weirdness. We pick up immediately after Alfie Williams’ Spike is rescued from a gang of zombies — excuse me, a gang of infected — by another gang of predators led by Sir Jimmy Crystal, whom we first met as an 8-year-old orphan in the last movie. He’s all grown up and become a sadistic satanist, which happens sometimes without good adulting. Jimmy — played by a diabolical Jack O’Connell in a tracksuit and gold chains, like a low-level Mafia lieutenant from “The Sopranos” — leads a band of young psychopaths, as deadly to both virus survivors as the snarling, semi-human infected. They don blond wigs and each is named Jimmy. There’s a whiff of “A Clockwork Orange” about them — menacing, prone to ultraviolence, gleeful in destruction. “Does that sound like normal screaming, Jimmy?” one asks. Spike, bless his heart, doesn’t belong here. Sir Jimmy’s opposite number is also out there, the scientist-doctor Dr. Ian Kelson, who hopes to find a cure for the virus. He’s a humanist, with a huge heart and open arms, even if he does construct tall pillars out of the bleached bones of the dead. That sounds bad, but he does it to memorialize them, an in memoriam segment made out of calcium.who is magnificent, totally committed, even going full Monty. There’s no winking in anything he does, just pure soul. People are people, no matter how damaged, he believes. “There’s just us,” he says. Bright orange due to the iodine he paints on his skin to ward off the virus, Kelson is alone in his bone temple, which, with a few tea lights, really pulls the look together. In perhaps a twist no one was expecting, Kelson gingerly reaches out to an infected Alpha — played by former MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry — who seems to enjoy being drugged by the doctor’s blowgun. It turns out they both like a hit or two of morphine and looking up at the sky, all blissed out. Or dancing. That’s when Duran Duran comes in, supplying “Ordinary World,” “Girls on Film” and “Rio” to a sight rare in zombie movies: Two whacked-out guys — one an eye-bulging monster who rips heads off with the spines still attached, the other a skinny Englishman who starred in “The English Patient” — swaying hand-in-hand to pop synth. (My money was on There’s plenty of good music in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” including Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” and one of the most gloriously unhinged uses of Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” ever conceived. If the previous film had a Fellini-esque vibe, this one has punky, anarchic feel. Who will emerge victorious on this blighted island? Sir Jimmy or Dr. Kelson? And have you noticed that the hallmark of every zombie movie — the constant running away from the snarling undead — has been quietly replaced by examinations of cults and mortality, the long-term effects of trauma and what it means to be human? Call it almost post-zombie. There’s a fifth movie in this franchise in the works, with some clues that this nightmarish world may yet produce a happy ending. But they’re getting better and better and, as insane as it sounds, it’s going to be sad to see it go. Long may the zombies dance. Perhaps we should take advice from the great poets of our time, Duran Duran: “I will learn to survive.” “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” a Sony Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong bloody violence, gore, graphic nudity, language throughout and brief drug use. Running time: 109 minutes. Three and half stars out of four.Kennedy is a theater, TV, music, food and obit writer and editor for The Associated Press, as well as a critic for theater, movies and music. He is based in New York City.
Nia Dacosta Jimmy Crystal Ralph Fiennes Ian Kelson Movies Film Reviews Jack Oconnell Trauma Mark Kennedy Injuries Danny Boyle Alfie Williams Entertainment Associated Press
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