Cascadia Calling, 2026.1.26
I’ve never been a huge movie person. The peak of my movie career was in college when my friends Ann and Paul guided 100% of my movie watching. My movie diet was whatever one or both of them happened to have on or be heading out to see in the theater. These days I see perhaps two movies a year in theater and another two at home. As far as medium goes, films rank near the bottom of my list by volume.
One of my movies for this year was 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. I’d heard great things and it happened to be showing at the Cinerama,1 a theater that I adore. To prep for it, I watched the two previous films in the series, 28 Weeks Later2 and 28 Years Later3. While I enjoyed both, they lacked the narrative punch and rich, cohesive worldbuilding of the first film in the series, 28 Days Later. Both films suffered from plots being forced only by inexplicable character choices, and both of them had terrible, incoherent 4th acts.
In that respect, they seem to me to be par for the course for modern movies. Perhaps this is my lack of cinematographic taste or experience, but it seems like no film these days has a proper fourth act. The climax is typically just one more set piece of action and the denouement is rushed for time, if it’s present at all. Worst of all, movies tend to be required by the economics of modern filmmaking to all end on a cliffhanger. Even if no further movie is planned or plotted, it has to be left open, just in case it makes a billion dollars and they want to shit out twelve more of them.
The fact that I’m talking this way about movies that I actually enjoyed is probably a sign for why I don’t watch that many of them.
The Bone Temple carried on one of the plots from 28 Years Later, but not the most interesting one. It took the themed gang premise from the very end of the movie and spun it out into a kind of terror cult. It was mostly played for gore and none of the characters involved really made that much sense. The young kid Spike reprises his role as a mewling idiot who makes inexplicably brave and foolhardy choices only when the plot demands it.
The movie is saved, however, by the mystical and heroic efforts of Ralph Fiennes in the role of Dr. Kelson. He leans hard into the role of a loving, but unhinged doctor alone among the bones of thousands of dead. His character is the only one that feels like it has a true purpose or desires in life. He’s the second-most unhinged character in the film (not counting all the zombies) and yet he feels by far the most human.
As with Weeks and Years previously, there is at least one promising B-plot that is squandered entirely. I assume these subplots will all be resurrected as needed, zombie-like, in future movies.
And, of course, it ended with a bit of fan service and a cliffhanger.
All-in-all it was a fun film, but it hardly delivers on the promise of the original. I’d recommend seeing it, but don’t pay extra to see it in a theater, unless you adore Ralph Fiennes or share my good fortune in living walking distance to one of the greatest theaters in the world.
Or “SIFF Downtown” to use its government name.
A morality tale about the importance of robust access control principles masquerading as a B+ Action Movie.
The most intense “putting your sick parent in hospice” story ever told.