I've been unimpressed by the 28 Days/Weeks/Years Later series. 2002's 28 Days Later (no written review, but 4/10, Skip it score) is overrated and 2007's 28 Weeks Later (6/10, Catch on cable/streaming), while being comparatively better is unmemorable. Last year's 28 Years Later was a too little, too late franchise relaunch (5/10, Skip it) which ended on scene clearly setting up a sequel that I didn't know had already been made, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple which picks up immediately after the end of its predecessor.
We find young Spike (Alfie Williams) having to fight to the death to be allowed to join the weird gang that had saved him, the Jimmys - who are styled after the notorious child molester/BBC presenter Jimmy Saville. (John Lydon got banned off the Beeb for alluding to Saville's activities which they clearly covered up.) Wearing track suits and blonde wigs, they're led by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), who calls them Fingers of a hand dedicated to serving "Old Nick" aka Satan. Spike manages to survive his initiation, while the Jimmy who challenged to fight Spike doesn't. Womp womp. They proceed to go off sadistically torturing and killing survivors they cross paths with.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), proprietor of the massive ossuary fortress of bones - a "bone temple" so to speak - is hanging out with his Alpha zombie friend, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry, who's a 6'9" former MMA fighter sporting a prosthetic shvantz), whom he can tranquilize instantly with darts and theorizes that perhaps the infected can be treated or cured.
Of course, eventually the Jimmys find Kelson's place and the top Jimmy pays him a visit to see if he's Old Nick (since he's observed with the Alpha "demon") and to make a deal where he can reconsolidate control over his Teletubbie followers after some setbacks.
Director Nia DaCosta, last seen flying the biggest Marvel flop, The Marvels, into the ground bounces back somewhat with a fairly stylish take on the material which eschews the hyperactive visuals of Danny Boyle (who directed the first and third films of the series), but she's held back by a threadbare script by series scribe Alex Garland. There simply isn't enough story here to justify a full movie.
It feels like 30-40 minutes worth of plot lopped of the end of 28 Years Later and that was padded out to 115 minutes and this was really drawn out to make 109 more minutes. A tightly-edited 150-180 minute version would've been so much better because The Bone Temple doesn't stand on its own; if you didn't see the first half you will have zero idea what the actual heck is going on, not that for all it's run time they really do much with it character-wise.
There are a couple of moments which stand out like Kelson's fandom of Duran Duran and big closing Iron Maiden number and the tantalizing glimpse of how the infection could be eradicated before it is lost to events and fans of the original will like the coda which clearly hopes to set up a fifth installment, but overall the series continues to be mediocre, weighed down by Garland's scripts. The guy isn't a hack, per se, but has a maddening inability to get his stories over the finish line intact.
The 4K Dolby Vision presentation starts off promisingly with very bold colors and lighting, but then settles down into more naturalistic tableaus which don't stress the format very much, but the rich colors are solid throughout.
Score: 4/10. Skip it unless you need to see how 28 Years Later wraps up.
0 comments:
Post a Comment