The Bone Temple Is Glorious

Nia DaCosta takes the zombie series in a strange and moving direction.

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THE WORLD NEVER STOPS, but it does sometimes freeze. Postapocalyptic movies have taught us that. They've presented all manner of wastelands strewn with the physical and cultural remnants of a past when the world was whole. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Days Later sequels began with such images—of an empty London at various moments of the zombie apocalypse—but last year’s 28 Years Later, reviving the franchise after nearly two decades, showed us how the survivors of that long-ago calamity tried to forge their own way, combating the “rage virus” with twisted new societies and cults built from history's detritus. Now, with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DaCosta, we witness a different kind of freeze: a psychological one. The minds of the people in this movie are stuck in the past—even the ones who weren't around to experience that past.

The Bone Temple is in many ways a more conventional film than