28 Years Later: The Bone Temple review: "The wildest and weirdest entry into the franchise yet"

Sneaked out to thousands of fans at screenings around the world a month prior to its official release, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has already received a rapturous welcome from the faithful. Nia DaCosta's film (working once again from a script by Alex Garland) picks up in the immediate aftermath of Danny Boyle's preceding chapter, but the two are tonally very different. Visceral and adrenalized from the off, this is by some way the wildest and the weirdest entry into the recently revived sort-of-zombie saga.

We begin minutes after the end of Boyle's film. Spike (Alfie Williams) is with the Jimmys – a murderous cult ghoulishly dressed in the image of the notorious sexual predator Jimmy Savile, who frequently proclaim a contraction of his catchphrase, "How's about that then?"

Their leader, Jack O'Connell's "Sir" Jimmy Crystal, was an ambiguous presence at the end of Years, but his malevolent nature is made immediately clear here: we catch up with Spike as he is fighting for his life against one of the gang. Initially outmatched, a lucky blow seals his fate: he lives and is taken under Crystal's wing, as the cult rampage across the infected-infested mainland.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) – Ian, as we will come to know him – is continuing his experiments on Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the "Alpha" from the previous film. He believes he has discovered a way to cure the infected, but he will have to survive his own encounter with the Jimmys first...

A smaller story

In terms of the larger plot, well, that's kind of it. This is a smaller and more focused story, and one that's far less concerned with the metaphorical state of the nation than Boyle's film. Instead, The Bone Temple is a biblically-tinged battle between the forces of good and evil channelled through the two troubled adults currently in Spike's life.

The way DaCosta approaches these themes, however, is fascinatingly bizarre. A home invasion by a group of Jimmy Savile acolytes? A stoner bromance between man and infected? Both of these things feature heavily – and that's not getting close to the bonkers energy of the film's closing act.

It's this finale, a tragi-comic spectacle that blends music and mayhem to thrilling effect, that will likely divide opinions most sharply. Certainly, DaCosta's film dials up the comedy more strongly than this franchise has seen before, but it's well-judged – a rueful line from Kelson here, a theatrical flourish from Crystal there. Hell, even Samson gets a laugh at one point.

The one person who isn't smiling is Spike. Alfie Williams was the surprise star of the first Years, but while he remains central to the overall story, he doesn't get anywhere near as much to do this time around. That's intentional – this is Kelson and Crystal's tale, with Spike caught in the middle – but it does add a certain sense of stasis to proceedings, with his attempts to escape repeatedly thwarted.

Unlikely father figures

Happily, both Jack O'Connell and Ralph Fiennes are magnificent. Jimmy Crystal, in particular, feels like one of the great screen villains of recent years: a gleefully malign showboat, but not without a believable dark charisma. You fully buy him as a cult leader.

DaCosta's history as a horror director comes in useful here, stringing out the tension in one particular scene, which stands as the nastiest moment in the franchise to date. It's perhaps a relief that the implications of Crystal's real-world inspiration are left unaddressed, with the Teletubbies instead invoked to represent the dark side of '90s British pop culture.

Fiennes, meanwhile, emphasises Kelson's melancholy nobility, while taking on a more active role in the story. There's just a hint of one of the actor's previous defining roles here, M. Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Not in the fussiness – if anything, Kelson is revealed to be a far more relaxed person than we might previously have guessed – but in his melancholy stoicism. A line from that film, "There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity," could stand as an apt description of Ian Kelson.

The beginning of the end?

Of course, what many will want to know about is what's going on with Jim – Cillian Murphy's character from the original 28 Days Later and the intended star of the now in-development third Years film. We're not going to get into that too much here, but suffice to say that his well-reported cameo in The Bone Temple feels like a neat joining of the dots between the first and – potentially – the last in the franchise.

That finality presumably depends in part on Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland's plans for the series. While The Bone Temple is certainly a piece in the larger 28 Years Later puzzle, it also feels more self-contained than its predecessor. It raises the thought that this film may exist, in part, as a dry run for other directors coming in to play in this universe in a more intentional way than 2007's ill-conceived 28 Weeks Later.

Or perhaps not. Regardless, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a muscular, visceral and, for the most part, deeply satisfying follow up to Boyle's film. Gorehounds who maybe felt a little short-changed by the previous movie will have their thirst quenched by some of the franchise's most brutal scenes yet, while those invested in the ongoing narrative will enjoy the tantalising hints for the future and some solid character work. It's DaCosta's best feature and proof that it's possible for someone other than Boyle to tell a gripping tale set in this world. Howzat?

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in theaters on January 14. For more, check out our 28 Years Later review and keep up with all the upcoming horror movies.