Recommendations of the Editorial team
When the only formative childhood memories are a fanatical priest father and constant sound from the Teletubbies – and later zombies invade the parents’ house – you can hardly blame anyone for losing their minds in the face of the apocalypse. In a casual, and therefore all the more shocking speech, Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) talks about fragments of his childhood. From the sight of them Teletubbieswho can watch themselves via their TV sets implanted in their stomachs – ad infinitum. Memory and fantasy merge and become a new reality. As a grotesque consequence, you end up marching in Asian tracksuits and the look of Jimmy Savile (the real monster!), performing perverted, Teletubby-like homages, murdering your way through the country and openly confessing to Satan.
A new type of belief in which the rage mutants, now called “demons,” no longer play a role.
This may seem far-fetched at first. But Nia DaCosta, the director of “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” and her author Alex Garland deliver a remarkably precise deconstruction of what shapes our belief system in the 21st century: media and church. It’s all just for show. Bling-bling that only someone who lacks education would fall for. In the Great Britain of the “28” narrative, which has sunk to medieval levels, this is a basic requirement.
Media and faith as performance
Even Dr. Ian Kelson, in the Colonel-Kurtz-but-in-good-natured portrayal of Ralph Fiennes, has now finally arrived in the canon of great zombie film protagonists (you can feel as safe around him as you can only feel next to Peter in “Dawn of the Dead”), relies on theater. He stages a performance to confuse his counterpart. A dance theater honoring Iron Maiden and their hit “The Number of the Beast”. He looks into the open mouths of young people who have not had enough of an education to learn that violence is always bad, and chants “666!” Clear “meme material,” it’s about time Ralph Finnes went viral. The loyalists of the Jimmy sect worship him and are the new Lost Boys.
So Satanist Jimmy meets the atheist Dr. Kelson, who wants to cure the “demons”, the zombies. His diagnosis is: psychosis. He is the NHS. He makes his mutant Samson addicted to drugs so that he can get to them. “He who saves one life saves the whole world” – a quote from the Talmud that also seems to be Kelson’s motto. The mutants still have souls and minds, contrary to what Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) once thought.
Nia DaCosta’s middle film in the trilogy
Director DaCosta doesn’t do Rian Johnson, so in her middle film of the planned “28” trilogy she follows the established laws – instead of making up nonsense, which some would have charitably described as “subverting expectations”.
Of all people, she doesn’t know what to do with Spike (Alfie Williams), the connecting character from “28 Years Later” to her film. The boy suffers through the 107-minute film with the corners of his mouth pulled down. Spike doesn’t say a word about his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), nor a word about his mother (Jodie Comer). His decision to embark on a coming-of-age journey, his walkabout, is the starting point of “Bone Temple”.
Unlike Jimmy, Spike at least didn’t grow up with a priest of damnation, nor with a children’s program full of posthuman, antennae-equipped children’s bodies, a television program that would instantly sober up any LSD user. Nia DaCosta’s sole interest is Dr. Kelson, Jimmy and last but not least, Mutant Samson (Chi Lewis-Perry).
DaCosta lacks a bit of Danny Boyle’s pop magic. Boyle will soon be 70 years old, but he can still make films that look fresher than those of many of his epigones. So many dreamlike scenes. A zombie running in the moonlight to the sounds of Wagner, Renton emerging from a toilet bowl to the romantic music of Brian Eno – you know all these moments.
Choice of music and questions of style
DaCosta’s Needle Drop by Radiohead now seems a bit forced, unlike the music biography Dr. Kelsons, who illustrates the key scenes of his post-apocalyptic life with a best-of selection from Duran Duran – “Girls on Film” (John Taylor’s bass probably never booms better than in Kelson’s basement hiding place), “Rio”, “Ordinary World” (fortunately no “Hungry like the Wolf”).
The saga has come a long way. From the postman Jim, who wakes up in a London hospital in “28 Days Later” and doesn’t understand who these people are running through the streets screaming and biting, to “28 Years Later: Bone Temple,” which features a Dr. Shows Kelson sitting in a meadow by a river, with a drugged rage zombie Samson next to him. They both enjoy the summer weather.
Ideology and coexistence
For Dr. Kelson is able to live with the zombies after they are reprogrammed. He represents the ideology of the victorious powers of the Second World War, whose aim was not to destroy the economy of the defeated countries, but rather their ideology.
The last minutes of “Bone Temple” are also about this analogy, about Churchill’s thoughts. Hopefully there will be a third film.