Fear is the New Faith.......

There is a long sequence near the end of 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE that is so perfectly staged, so over the top in every way possible that I laughed out loud. It's absolutely, madly, hellishly perfect.

Sadly, you'll need to suffer through so much graphic torture and insufferable death to get to that sequence, it's hard to recommend you stay seated.

The Devil is in the details, as it were.

Picking up shortly after the events of last year's "28 Years Later", young Spike (a great Alfie Williams) is under the thumb of Sir Jimmy Crystal, a Charles Manson like gang leader with a whole lot of Jimmy's leaving a trail of death behind them at Sir Jimmy's bidding.

Jack O'Connell, hot off of playing the villain Remmick in "Sinners", the best film of 2025, returns as the cult figure who seems to control his minions like murderous puppets. O'Connell is dangerous & beyond twisted, but the sequences in which they capture and torture the surviving humans of the infection and plague are disgusting, relentless and just plain too much.

I began to wonder if one of my favorite screenwriters, Alex Garland, was trying to make a heavy handed metaphor or theme around how much we love watching our heroes slaughter the zombie-like infected, but cringe at the same deaths inflicted on the survivors.

One big difference.

The zombies are killed with a shot to the head or a knife to the brain, a quick kill to survive and move on. The humans suffer graphic, long sequences of scream inducing torture.

The film's better storyline dives into the continuing saga of Dr. Kelson (the reliably superb Ralph Fiennes) and his growing suspicion that he has found a cure for the plague that has ravaged the Earth for the past 28 years.

Kelson builds a fascinating story line with Samson, the giant Alpha male of the infected tribe, well played by Chi Lewis-Parry. There is real suspense, intelligence and hope in the scenes between Samson and Kelso. They become the spirit of the story, but evaporate every time the action pops back to Sir Jimmy and his murdering squad.

When the two stories within do eventually meld, it immediately improves.

The delicate dance between O'Connell's Sir Jimmy and Fiennes Dr. Kelso is fascinating from their first glance at each other.

Director Nia DaCosta has stated that her intent was to deliberately move away from Danny Boyle's style and create something "bonkers" and all her own. Well, mission accomplished, I guess.

Her production design team absolutely blows it out of the park and we get to experience the wild Bone Temple much more deeply this time out. During the day, in the middle of the night with stars swirling above, it becomes an incredible space where the climax of this middle chapter of the new trilogy takes place.

About the best sequence of the film: I'll reveal little, beyond to say that when you near "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden blow out of the Dolby Cinema speakers, buckle up. Fiennes delivers something so manic, grand and BONKERS that for about ten minutes, the film is perfection.

It's a thrilling, scary and hilarious scene that blows everything else around it out of the water. I loved it.

Then we get a coda that seems to have gently floated in from a very, very different movie. It's a jarring, welcome surprise ending that's as shocking as the tone shift with the appearance of the Jimmys at the end of the last film.

It actually turned me around and made me intrigued to see the final chapter that's due at a future date.

That's a minor miracle when I spent most of the first half of the film shaking my head anytime Kelso & Samson weren't on screen.

I'm hoping Boyle comes back to direct the final chapter, his sure hand, visual style and vision is sorely missed as this one spins wildly off its rails.

THE BONE TEMPLE set itself is a meticulous construction of over 1000 towers featuring 5500 skulls and 150,000 bones, one of the most visually stunning physical sets in the last five decades of film.

If only this chapter of the story had been constructed with such precision.

I'll give it a C-, saved from a much lower grade by Ralph Fiennes 11th hour performance that seems to spew forth from hell itself. It's a WOW that saves the film around it from being a hellish disappointment.