28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review

Alex Garland writes both halves and Nia DaCosta directs this one, and the handoff is the most interesting thing about the project. Where the first film is elegiac, this one is deranged. The cult built around a track suited lunatic who styles himself a lord plays for real menace and real absurdity at once, and Jack O'Connell commits so completely that the tonal risk pays off.

Ralph Fiennes gives the doctor a weary grace that anchors the picture whenever it threatens to float away, and his scenes with the Alpha are the most unsettling material the series has produced. Sean Bobbitt shoots the ruined north of England in a hard, drained light, and Hildur Gudnadottir's score does a great deal of the work, grinding underneath sequences that would otherwise play as camp.

Alfie Williams carries more of the film than a young actor should have to and does not buckle. The split among reviewers is about the writing. Some read the structure as bold and mythic, others as incoherent, and both readings are defensible, because the film abandons narrative logic whenever an image looks more interesting. It never found an audience and grossed less than it cost, but it is the best received entry in the series and the boldest thing anyone has done with this material since the original.