{"id":694016,"date":"2026-01-13T22:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T22:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/694016\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T22:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T22:00:11","slug":"nia-dacosta-brings-blood-guts-and-brains-to-the-zombie-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/694016\/","title":{"rendered":"Nia DaCosta Brings Blood, Guts And Brains To The Zombie Franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cNo Children Beyond This Point\u201d says the sign in the dilapidated water park, the shabby but perfect place to start the fourth instalment of the 28 Days franchise. Directed by Nia DaCosta<\/a>, who more than earned her horror spurs with the 2021 remake of Candyman, 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple certainly is the nastiest and possibly the best of the series, a return-to-roots affair that plays like a reverse angle on 28 Years Later. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt was clearly shot back-to-back with its predecessor, featuring the same sets and a few of the same actors. But the familiarity it seems to offer is deceptive; all bets are off when it comes to survival, and DaCosta makes sure everyone goes out in the grisliest way possible.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a statement of intent, that opening scene is as lo-fi as can be, but disturbing nonetheless. Spike (Alfie Williams), the young adventurer from 28 Years, has been taken in by the Jimmys, a street gang led by the charismatic but psychotic Jimmy Crystal (Jack O\u2019Connell). The Jimmys made a late but jaw-dropping entry in the previous film, where their controversial outfits \u2014 blond wigs, tracksuits and the kind of jingle-jangle jewelry worn by depraved British TV personality Jimmy Savile \u2014 added a surreal, left-field jolt of WTF that almost derailed the ending. This time, they are front and center, and the film\u2019s strongest suit \u2014 praise Sir Lord! \u2014 is that DaCosta does not play their sadistic antics for laughs.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u201828 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u2019 To Scare Off Na\u2019vi From No. 1 With $20M+ MLK Opening \u2013 Box Office Preview<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWhich is where we begin: Alfie, armed with a knife, is forced to fight to the death (\u201cNo quarter!\u201d) against one of Crystal\u2019s \u201cfingers.\u201d Terrified, and with no sense of anatomy, Spike stabs his opponent in the thigh, hitting the femoral artery and causing him to bleed to death. The boy\u2019s fate is slow and harsh, even in a world where people have their heads ripped and their brains scooped out. Worse, Spike is forced to join Crystal\u2019s gang and take the name Jimmy, effectively joining a nihilistic death cult that, for a time, brings to mind the daddy of all nihilistic death cults, the one seen in 1970\u2019s Beneath the Planet of the Apes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meantime, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes<\/a>) is continuing his work in the field, the iodine-smothered medic hiding out in his underground man-cave with his Duran Duran and Radiohead vinyl (the lyrics to the former\u2019s \u201cOrdinary World\u201d are artfully deployed). Kelson has been tracking the new \u201calpha\u201d strain of mutants and is taking a watchful eye on the particularly aggressive male he calls Samson (\u201cI named you for your size and strength \u2026 and hair\u201d). The idea of a trainable zombie was pursued by George A. Romero in Day of the Dead with the personable Bub, but Samson becomes much more than a test subject to Kelson as they dance together in his self-built ossuary (the \u201cbone temple\u201d of the title), smashed out of their heads on what\u2019s left of his personal stash of morphine.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tCrystal and the doctor are on a collision course, though neither knows it yet, and screenwriter Alex Garland takes the scenic route to get there. DaCosta being a non-Brit helps enormously here; in someone else\u2019s sights, the Jimmys might be played for laughs, given Crystal\u2019s leering catchphrase (\u201c\u2019Owzat!\u201d) and their obsession with the Teletubbies (a callback to the beginning of 28 Years). DaCosta dispenses with irony; instead, there\u2019s a Manson Family-meets-Village of the Damned vibe to these feral kids, notably in a chilling, Straw Dogs-style siege on a remote farmhouse. Crystal refers repeatedly to acts of \u201ccharity,\u201d famously the real Savile\u2019s cover for the crimes he never paid for. But Crystal\u2019s ideas of charity are cruel, violent and much stronger than anything in the franchise so far.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u201828 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u2019 Director Nia DaCosta On Upping The Sequel\u2019s Gore, Assessing \u2018The Marvels\u2019 Aftermath \u2013 Crew Call Podcast<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, anyone expecting a rote continuation of the story will be surprised by the way that it seems to take a pause, ending with a coda (and a surprise reappearance) that pretty much guarantees a third installment. Spike takes a backseat, and who knows what\u2019s happened to his father, not to mention that whole island community? Key to this is Fiennes\u2019 commando performance, a tour de force with so few f*cks given that the film\u2019s astonishing, electrifying climax could put him back into the awards conversation with a part that couldn\u2019t be farther away from Conclave\u2019s Cardinal Thomas. O\u2019Connell, too, confirms his villainous chops with a subtle variation on his Sinners role, playing a seductive but sick, delusional psycho who kids himself that he has the devil\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaCosta, meanwhile \u2014 perhaps much more than Danny Boyle<\/a> \u2014 understands how much work the horror genre can do for you, which is a way of saying that The Bone Temple doesn\u2019t lay on its political subtext with a trowel (you can go to Wicked: For Good for that). Instead, she communicates the loss of civilization through the noble Dr. Kelson and his wistful memories of \u201cshops and fridges and telephones and personal computers.\u201d There was, he sighs, a sense of certainty: \u201cThe foundations, they seemed unshakable.\u201d But shake they did, and here we are on Zombie Island, aka the UK, and DaCosta isn\u2019t about to let us forget that, with riotous scenes of flesh-eating carnage whenever things get too quiet. Like Dr. Kelson, she puts on a good show. Part 3 can\u2019t come soon enough.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u201828 Years Later\u2019 Review: Danny Boyle Delivers Severed Heads And Broken Hearts In His Gory Zombie-Horror Threequel<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tTitle:<\/strong>\u00a028 Years Later: The Bone Temple<\/a>
Release date:<\/strong> January 16, 2026 (US)
Distributor:\u00a0<\/strong>Sony Pictures
Director:<\/strong>\u00a0Nia DaCosta
Screenwriter:\u00a0<\/strong>Alex Garland
Cast:<\/strong>\u00a0Ralph Fiennes, Jack O\u2019Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parr
Running time:<\/strong>\u00a01 hr 49 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNo Children Beyond This Point\u201d says the sign in the dilapidated water park, the shabby but perfect place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[79884,48891,77,209491,3943,33577,14062,14264,6080,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-694016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-28-years-later-the-bone-temple","9":"tag-danny-boyle","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-jack-oconnell","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-nia-dacosta","14":"tag-novid","15":"tag-ralph-fiennes","16":"tag-review","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115890043257464458","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}