You’ll need a strong stomach for this! BRIAN VINER reviews 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

28 Years Later: Bone Temple (18, 109 minutes)

Verdict: Brutal but clever

Evaluation:

NIA DaCosta’s survival horror film 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple isn’t exactly for the squeamish, just as jobs in slaughterhouses are totally ill-advised for lifelong vegans.

It is brutally, horribly, chillingly violent. It is also bold, bright and courageous storytelling.

The last film of the series, 28 Years Later (2025), directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, carried the story that started in 28 Days Later (2002) and continued in 28 Weeks Later (2007) to the present day.

This is the sequel written by Garland, who also designed the entire post-apocalyptic horror setting heavily inspired by John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids. As a teenager I remember being completely enraged by this sci-fi horror story in all its manifestations: as a novel, a movie, and an excellent TV drama that aired in 1981.

Garland’s vision is just as vivid and powerful as Wyndham’s, though much more brutal. But the brutality is leavened with sharp wit and provides more than a few laugh-out-loud moments.

It’s also a bold stroke of genius to inflate the late Jimmy Savile by using the monster as the model for the film’s deranged, irredeemable villain.

This is the bejeweled Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), the self-proclaimed son of Satan, or ‘Old Nick’, who runs a satanic cult in the countryside, disembowels people, has rotten teeth and a velvet tracksuit.

28 Years Later: A shot from the Bone Temple. Pictured: Dr. Ralph Fiennes as Kelson

Savile clashes with Charles Manson, and after a harrowing start to the film with an aggressive curtain-raiser (top tip: don’t get into your cinema seat even two minutes late), he recruits a reluctant young Spike (Alfie Williams) into his gang… all the while being named Jimmy and forced to wear a blonde wig.

Meanwhile, in the ‘bone temple’ he has built from the remains of the dead, the honorable but deeply eccentric Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) bonds with the growling giant he calls Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) and tries to find a cure for the devastating epidemic that has caused so much carnage.

Director DaCosta continues to deftly switch between these twin narratives, but of course they have to collide eventually, and when they do it’s thrilling.

One of Sir Jimmy’s more empathetic followers, played by Erin Kellyman (who showed impressive versatility after an excellent turn as a grieving New Yorker in Scarlett Johansson’s recent directorial debut, Eleanor the Magnificent), notices Kelson from afar. She thinks it must be Old Nick and duly notifies Sir Jimmy.

So she finds a way to further keep the cult members in line, and what follows is basically Traitors on acid, with loyalty tests that Claudia Winkleman couldn’t have imagined in her wildest nightmares.

There’s plenty of mischief afoot, from the soundtrack featuring Duran Duran to pop cultural references ranging from Teletubbies to Spinal Tap. To enjoy these, you’ll have to look beyond the gore, and not everyone will want to look that far; but if you can do it, there are all kinds of unexpected rewards.

It’s a surprisingly clever film, considering some of the current world leaders and the unquestioning believers who idolize them, while also satirizing religious fundamentalism and politics.

It’s superbly portrayed by a superb cast throughout, with 15-year-old Williams’ abundant talent in particular. While he more than holds his own alongside the strengths of Fiennes and O’Connell, the cast is eventually strengthened by Cillian Murphy, briefly reprising the role he played in the first film 24 years ago.

I expect his contribution to increase in the next film, in which Boyle will return as director, whose title has not yet been announced.

I personally can’t wait. But I have a strong stomach.

The Rip (no certificate, 133 minutes)

Verdict: So much tension

Evaluation:

You’ll need a different kind of grit to enjoy The Rip, a formulaic Netflix thriller set in Miami where writer-director Joe Carnahan unashamedly and somewhat unimaginatively relies on the camaraderie exuded by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Damon plays Lieutenant Dane Dumars, while Affleck stars as Sergeant J.D. Byrne: a pair of tough, all-seeing detectives who, following a tip, lead a team to a suburban house, where they find a large stash of cartel money hidden in the attic.

Carnahan does his best to flesh out Dane and JD as characters (the former mourning his ten-year-old son who died of cancer, the latter mourning his girlfriend, a fellow cop who was shot by a pair of masked men). But they never amount to anything more than Damon and Affleck doing their own thing.

Still, they’re both very good at their jobs, and there’s a glimmer of uncertainty as we try to guess who this two-faced cop might be because the formula dictates that there must be at least one.

This footage released by Netflix shows Catalina Sandino Moreno in a scene from the movie ‘The Rip’

Moreover, the A-list supporting cast includes Kyle Chandler and Teyana Taylor, who won a Golden Globe for their wild performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, and will likely soon add an Academy Award to the mantelpiece.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in theaters now. The Rip is streaming on Netflix.