The zombie film is the horror subgenre that refuses to die, lumbering out of the grave with its unquenchable appetite and slurring dialogue - an exquisite corpse that can always be redressed for current industry trends. Last year’s 28 Years Later [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] marked Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s legacy-quel to their innovative 2002 hit, 28 Days Later, heralding an intention to launch a new big-budget trilogy and reuniting two creative collaborators who tend to thrive together rather than apart, as the artistic and modest commercial success of both films shows. Its subtitle referencing an expressionistically scary setting which is key to the new films’ mythos, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple sees American director Nia DaCosta ably taking hold of the franchise’s reins before Boyle’s final chapter, but it suffers from a sense of diminishing returns and largely eschews the innovative digital video textures which previously distinguished the series. The film is released globally this week through Sony Pictures Releasing.

The last film concluded with an alarming cliffhanger, where a cult called the Jimmys - whose leader, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), sports the crudely ornate attire of disgraced UK TV personality Jimmy Saville - abducts the young protagonist, Spike (Alfie Williams). Decked in sheer white hairpieces, jumpsuits, and inverted crucifixes, they’re a lairy gang of ersatz Satanists, equally if not more sinister than the “infected” humans marauding around England’s North East. Also introduced in the previous instalment, and more prominent here, is Dr. Ian Kelson (a game Ralph Fiennes), who’s already an iconic character in modern genre cinema. A proud NHS physician from the “before” period, he’s both a symbol of scientific rationality and undoubted psychological disintegration, emphasised by his hermit-like survivalism with his skin discoloured by protective iodine and cadaver blood, and the grotesque yet intuitive new spirituality he promotes, encapsulated by the phrase “memento mori”.

The saga is reminiscent of Romero’s Living Dead trilogy, which enjoys an unyielding influence on Garland and whose plot dynamics always pivoted on the human survivor characters and their loose grip on self-preservation. This is reflected in the innocent Spike who fled his family’s isolationist community on the island of Lindisfarne and who tries to protect himself within the relative sanctity of the Jimmys, finding an ally in Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), a free thinker who’s sceptical about Crystal’s anarchistic worldview and violent dogma, but who keeps the cult safe from the infected population nonetheless.

Subtler than in Garland’s recent feature Civil War [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], the social commentary in the present film functions more as a gateway to the dystopian scenarios and pulpy, cerebral concepts which the director relishes, rather than playing any specific didactic role, as exemplified by a climactic dialogue face-off, set to a galloping 80’s metal track, which is a dynamic blend of pretentiousness and pure camp. Rather than leaving the film’s suggestive imagery tantalisingly open, as in Boyle’s movie, Garland and DaCosta fully explain the two films’ main plot threads and give the audience closure, making them feel like screenwriting puzzles to be solved with a slight sense of efficiency.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, was co-produced by the UK and the US, courtesy of DNA Films, Decibel Films and Columbia Pictures.