The Bone Temple picks up shortly after 28 Years Later ended with the young Spike (Alfie Williams) being picked up by a gang of tracksuit wearing zombie killers who worship their leader Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) like he was the Messiah. Meanwhile, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) has seen some interesting changes in the zombie “Alpha” Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) and is trying to establish a line of communication between humans and the “Infected”.
The Bone Temple is a lot more uneven than its predecessor, but the heights it manages to hit are awfully lofty. Before we discuss that, let’s get into what doesn’t work. The stuff with the “Jimmys” is pretty goofy. I know it’s a common motif in zombie movies to have humans be more of a threat than the undead. That doesn’t mean it exactly works. The fact that you have such an interesting character like Spike and stick him in a blonde wig and let him more or less become a fly on the wall for much of the picture also kinda sucks.
So, essentially that’s where my nitpicks end because the rest of the movie is aces. The last one was more consistent, but this one absolutely rips when it finds its footing. The scenes with Fiennes kick all kinds of ass. His smallish role in the last film was a real highlight. This time out, he gets tons more screen time. The scenes where he strikes up an unlikely friendship with the hulking Samson play like a mix of the scenes of Frankenstein and the blind man in Bride of Frankenstein and the Dr. Frankenstein and Bub scenes in Day of the Dead.
The best part about his character is that he’s a raging Duranie. After a hard day of surviving the zombie apocalypse, our boy likes to strip down in his fallout shelter and play “Girls on Film” at full blast. Respect.
It gets better though. I won’t spoil the end. What I will say is that it culminates with Fiennes performing one of the greatest song and dance routines ever shown on the silver screen. It won’t happen, but Fiennes should seriously be nominated for an Oscar. I mean, he deserves it for his performance as a whole. It’s just that he is so fucking awesome in this scene that I feel the Academy needs to take notice ASAP. Even if he isn’t nominated, I feel confident in saying you won’t find a more memorable sequence all year.
In fact, I kind of wish they could’ve taken all of Fiennes’ scenes from both films, edited them together, and released it as one big movie. Oh well. Fiennes also gets the best line of the year when he says, “Pride moves inside me like maggots in the corpse of Christ!”
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