Recxpectations: 28 Years Later - The Bone Temple

First off, I have to confess that I can’t say “The Bone Temple” without smirking. I always want to make a crack about how it’s the perfect name for a gay bar. If there isn’t a live, all-male revue version of this movie in the near future, then art is truly dead.

GOOGLE SYNOPSIS: “Dr. Kelson finds himself in a shocking new relationship with consequences that could change the world as he knows it, while Spike's encounter with Jimmy Crystal becomes a nightmare he can't escape.”

TL;DR: 28 Years Later fans likely won’t be disappointed by the sequel but it’s a film that seems like it could have been more, and it feels like three steaming mini-series episodes of material shoved into a under-two-hour film. I wouldn’t recommend it to people who haven’t seen the previous films; they’ll be able to follow but I doubt they’ll connect with any of it enough to make it worthwhile.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends the year in my Top Ten but I hope there will be 10 movies I like more than this.

RECOMMENDED EXPECTATIONS

EXPECT: AN EPISODE MORE THAN A SEQUEL
For me, 28 Years Later - The Bone Temple felt like the 7th episode of a 10 episode series. It’s an episode that can’t get as deep into the characters because it has so much work do to push the story forward. Of course, the issue is that this is the second movie of a trilogy and fourth movie of a franchise so I kind of wish we got to spend some more time with the characters before moving forward with the story. (That being said, I’m happy the film was an hour and 50 minutes and not well over two hours like so many films nowadays.)

DON’T EXPECT: A TYPICAL ZOMBIE MOVIE
At this point, I’m not sure why anyone would expect this out of a 28 Later movie but this is more a post-apocalyptic drama than a zombie film. There are a few moments of the usual zombie action but the undead aren’t the looming danger that they usually are in a zombie movie. Thematically, the Humans Are As Big A Threat angle of The Jimmys isn’t breaking new ground (even in this franchise) but there’s still a lot in this film - especially the soundtrack - that could knock people for a loss at first.

EXPECT: RALPH FIENNES TO CARRY THE MOVIE
The film mostly bounces between Fiennes’s Dr. Alec and The Jimmys but the core of the film is Ralph Fiennes. I feel like it’s the kind of performance that gets ignored by awards because it’s so good that you get immersed in it and forget that it’s a performance.

DON’T EXPECT: BIG BOY SPIKE
For me, one of the more disappointing moments of the film was speeding through young Spike’s realization that he’s made a deal with the devil. The previous film is partly to blame for this, rushing into the meeting with the Jimmys but 28 Years Later is so much about Spike’s coming-of-age and path to manhood and then, in this film, he’s basically just a quivering, scared mess throughout. Not that it’s hard to fathom why; Spike learns the very real lesson that what you think makes you a man doesn’t necessarily prepare you for the cruelty that the world can throw at you.

EXPECT: MORE, BUT NOT TOO MUCH, GORE
A lot of the critics discuss how violent and gory this film is - and it is gorier than maybe the other 28 Laters, but compared to other zombie films, I didn’t find it a top tier gory film. I averted my eyes a few of times but it wasn’t a full-on assault of gore. The goriest scene in the film is tough but I feel like other films would have shown even more of the hard-to-watch actions.