The second film of the planned trilogy, a continuation of the epic saga to close out the Rage zombie series of movies, where the new violence meets the old reverence in a post-apocalyptic world.
Welcome back fans and friends and odds and ends, to the world after the world ended, at least as far as a good deal of humanity was concerned. The first film 28 Days Later brought lasting profound changes to the zombie genre of movies, while the sequel/prequel 28 Weeks Later gave us a more complete understanding of the origins of the Rage virus that severed humanity. We waited, impatiently it must be said, for long long years, for the sequel 28 Years Later to be gifted to us. (To give some context, 28 Years Later has been stuck in development hell with director Danny Boyle and others, since approximately 2007.) In 2025 we were finally presented with the third film, rumored to be the first in a trilogy series for 28 Years Later, to some rather seriously mixed reviews. And now here we are, back again, hopeful but cautious, as one should be with any zombie movie. Make sure your blonde wig is on tight, and let’s get into this!
We begin more or less exactly where we left off in the previous film, with Spike (Alfie Williams) having been taken by the Cult of Jimmys, led by the redoubtable Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal himself (Jack O’Connell). The boss there wears a velour tracksuit, a buncha gold chains, and a dubious plastic tiara because he’s the favored son of Old Nick, also known as, well, Satan. And Old Nick has commanded that Sir Lord Jimmy make other Jimmys in his image, that he calls “fingers”, come together to make a fist of Jimmys, that he uses to travel the land and bring Old Nick’s version of charity to the surviving others. These “fingers”, and there must be seven of them at any given time, wear these weird-ass white-blond wigs, teenager-sized track suits, have hidden masks that look like something out of a Purge nightmare, and carry knives to dispense their bloody rampage on Sir Lord Jimmy’s orders. And Spike gets the same ultimatum others caught by the cult of Jimmy have – take out a Jimmy and take their place, or else get taken out himself.
Honestly, none of the Jimmys expected Spike to score a hit like that, and the sight of arterial blood spraying out that Jimmys life while the rest of them laughed and heckled, was an amusing and fairly accurate sight. No-one seems to have remembered that Spike is a hunter trained by his father on their home island, even if his heart and sense of empathy gets in the way often of the violence that needs doing in this zombified world. And thus, since it was kill or be killed, Spike gets the awful white-blonde wig that belonged to his predecessor and a place among the “fingers”, forced to follow and participate in the monstrous machinations of Sir Lord Jimmy as he wanders to spread the word of Old Nick.
Elsewhere, but not terribly far away, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) maintains the ossuary, a resting place for the bones of the dead, he built over long years of study and isolationism while researching the Rage virus. The Alpha zombie Kelson dubbed “Samson” (Chi Lewis-Parry), that naked titan who’s been stuck in permanent Rage mode for, sheesh, has it really been literal years now, proves himself yet again to be an anomaly among other zombies. The chemical cocktail the good doctor makes for his non-violent blow darts turn out to have some seriously surprising effects on Samson, first and perhaps most profound of all, the stoned pause of the Rage virus on the behemoth. And when the good doctor makes this astounding discovery, like any good scientist who still remembers his humanity enough left to dance to his now-ancient vinyl records, Kelson determines to see how far back from the brink of zombie-hood he can take Sampson.
Meanwhile, not terribly far but elsewhere, the Cult of Jimmy have descended on a farmhouse of survivors, invading like the Firefly clan have come to visit for breakfast and mayhem. Despite being with them and wearing the horrific blonde Jimmy wig, Spike proves unable to partake of the brutal charity commanded to the “fingers” by Sir Lord Jimmy, inflicted upon the hapless unbelievers of the farmhouse. The “removing the shirt” scene in particular is spectacularly cruel, and serves as a shocking reminder that, like the atrocities shown in the very first 28 Days Later film, in this zombified post-apocalyptic world, it’s the humans left that do the worst things to each-other.
All of this mummery is of course leading to a confrontation between the Cult of Jimmys and Dr. Kelson, right there amongst the bone towers of the ossuary, which can arguably be rightfully called The Bone Temple. This climactic scene, set to the aggressively operatic metal tones of Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast”, is absolutely freaking incredible. The acting range of Fiennes, from empathetic apocalyptic doctor all the way to a fire-spinning Satan himself, is on full Broadway-production-style display, much to audience delight.
The shift from Spike and the Jimmys and the doc and Samson, to a much different scene of breakfast with some very familiar characters, is particularly jarring, like we had been watching a film version of The Walking Dead and they just did an abrupt chapter break with no warning at all. And while it is great to finally see Cillian Murphy return to the Rage zombie films, his attachment at the very end of the middle 28 Years Later film had better bring together a gigantic payoff in the third, and purportedly final, film.
Bang your head to Iron Maiden and dance among the bones in 28 Years Later The Bone Temple, in theaters now!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass