Saw The Bone Temple
I quite liked 28 Years Later. It's a movie that seems designed like a science experiment: how unpleasant can we make a film while still having it come across as emotional, thoughtful, and even sentimental? Ralph Fiennes' character, Ian Kelson, is incredibly odd and very well-crafted. I was excited to see a movie with more of him in it.
The Bone Temple is just that. It's just more Ralph Fiennes and his big neighborhood zombie, played by Chi Lewis-Parry. They both do an amazing job, and I was honestly frustrated whenever these two were not on screen. What this movie is doing with zombie and post-apocalyptic media tropes is a lot of fun!
In college I deliberately sat down to read a ton of post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels in a row - not for a class, but just for my own entertainment. In fact, I read most of the big titles in that genre in the same term of my sophomore year, while I was working a part time job on my off term in Boston. It was a lot of fun and taught me a lot about how politics, history, and ideology can shape a genre. Comparing Day of the Triffids to The Road is a hell of an experience. My interest in the genre stems mainly from having the precise kind of disease that would leave me dead 2 weeks into "the end of the world", as these books depict it. The fantasies people have about a world where everyone like me is dead - the fantasy that a type of super cool Regular Joe could suddenly find himself ruling the world only because he isn't yet actively disabled - I just find those fantasies super interesting!
A lot of zombie stories have a moment where the protagonists discover that an idiot is keeping a zombie alive in their basement because they're not yet able to "let go" and realize that their family member is "already dead." I'll just say that The Bone Temple turns this plot point on its head - Ian Kelson spends the entire movie exploring exactly what kind of relationship he can have with a zombie. The story's answer to that question is, in its own way, also kind, sentimental, and emotional, in a way similar to but quite unique from the first movie.
I did find the movie maybe a little too gory for my taste. I spent the first half completely paralyzed with discomfort. The second half contains most of the more exciting zombie stuff and was a lot more fun for me.
I do think that gore is a coherent part of the movie, though. Some of it has gotta be there. These movies are about taking the grossest, most alarming behavior you can imagine, then putting it in a context that renders it somehow compassionate and kind. There are plenty of other stories about people finding kindness and fellowship in the apocalypse, but these movies have, I think, a different and wider ambition for their kindness. I like it a lot, and I'm very excited to see the third movie!