Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all of the zombie movies in order, except for this week where we're once again in the year 2026 to talk about 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple.

You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures. What do they call them, zombies or something?

Zombie. What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie?

Well a zombie…there’s um... ...Mr. Bill there’s... ...the living dead.

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand.

Because a Zombie has no will on his own.

What is wrong, what is wrong.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to yet another fresh zombie movie discussion. I'm John.

I'm Andy.

We are talking about 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple, today, which is super exciting.

Yes.

We have some bad news for you. So Andy, tell the people what our bad news is.

The bad news is that it's going to be really hard to do this episode where we talk about The Bone Temple without spoiling things.

Yes.

So John and I had a discussion and we've decided, apologies to those of you who don't like spoilers, but we just need to sound the spoiler horn on this whole episode. So we're going to spoil in our discussion everything about this movie, everything about the first 28 Years Later movie, and probably stuff from all of the 28 Days Later franchise in general.

Absolutely. But before I ring the horn and before you leave, let us just say this. If you liked the first 28 Years Later, you should go see this movie. It is good. It is a direct sequel. So you do have to see 28 Years Later and it's totally worth it. You should see both movies. If you haven't seen 28 Years Later, go do that and then go see this. It's a great movie and kind of a lush movie. Like it looks great. So a theater is a great experience for this film. So aside from that, now we're getting into spoilers. So here comes this.

Yeah. And we'll be waiting for you when you get back from that assignment of five hours worth of movie watching.

Absolutely. All right. Well, here we go. Spoiler time right now. All right, Andy, I'm going to take the role of producer Brad today and we'll just run down 28 years later, The Bone Temple.

But it's not because you killed producer Brad and are taking his place, right?

He is not a zombie, nor is he buried in my backyard. So I just want to be clear about that. And beyond that, I can't say. But so 28 years later, The Bone Temple was released in the US on January 16th, 2026. It was a budget of $63 million. It was actually made simultaneously or shot back to back with 28 Years Later by Danny Boyle. But the difference is there is a different director, which we'll get to in a second. Box office results are not as good as the first 28 Years Later. And this is another baffler for me, Andy. Tomato meter reading is 93 percent. Popcorn meter, for those who aren't familiar, Rotten Tomatoes has two ratings. They have the tomato meter, which is critics, and they have the popcorn meter, which is fans. So, tomato meter, 93 percent. Popcorn meter, 88 percent. So, everybody loves this movie that has seen it, which is part of why I wanted to encourage everybody to see it at the beginning. It's good. It's worth seeing in the theater. So, the only thing I can think, so it's performed about half as well as the first one from last June. The only thing I can think is last June. Well, A, sequels always struggle, right? Like, sequels never quite do. Unless it's Empire or Aliens or something. But also, it's January. I mean, it's not movie season, so that's the only two things I can think of.

January, it's like the coldest it's ever been right now, if you live in the Midwest. So, people are staying home.

You know, it's funny, as a kid, you used to go to the theater to get in the AC, and I did the reverse of that. I went to a movie in the theater yesterday to get out of the cold.

And do you have a theater that has like heated seats?

No, I do not.

Okay, because I cranked my seat heating all the way up. So, I went with a group of friends. We were the only ones in the theater, and then we all went out for food afterwards, and we were the only ones in the restaurant afterwards. So, I think people are just staying home.

Yeah, and for those who are in the future from us right now, or listening to this well after January 2026, when I went, it was minus one degrees without the windchill. And I went with friend of the pod, Matt Wilson, and then we went and got coffee afterwards. So, that was not this movie. Actually, I saw this movie a week ago. I saw a movie called No Other Choice, which actually I will talk about as part of the presentation here. Okay, let's get to some credits. So, this is not directed by Danny Boyle, who directed both 28 Days Later and the more recent 28 Years Later. He had, as far as I know, nothing but maybe executive producer involvement in 28 Weeks Later, which is why we don't discuss it that much. This was directed by a new star, American director Nia DaCosta. She has eight credits as a writer, 11 credits as a director, and she sort of hit the scene with a small film from 2018 called The Little Woods. But what's more relevant to fans of this podcast is she directed the 2021 film Candyman, which, I learned in researching this, is not a remake. It is a sequel. So the idea behind that movie is it's the same place, it's the same neighborhood, but it's gone through gentrification, but the Candyman returns. So I now haven't watched this movie, and now that I know that, I want to see it.

Yeah, same.

Yeah. She also directed 2023 Marvels, which was the one about Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel. It was not a box office hit, and I think Marvel movies are struggling right now for a number of reasons. Last year, she released a film called Hedda, which is a modern take on Hedda Gobbler by Henry Gibson with a queer spin on it. So that sounded really interesting to me too.

Yeah. I've seen the Marvels, and if you had told me that the director of that movie would release just a real great piece of horror film a couple of years later, I would not have believed you, but here we are.

Yeah, but now you know that you want to see Candyman, don't you?

I do, yes.

All right. She did not write this movie, however. This is written by Alex Garland, who also wrote 28 Years Later. He has 22 writing credits and most of them are great, just to do a quick rundown. He's sort of Danny Boyle's guy, but he wrote his first credit was the year 2000, The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He wrote 28 Days Later in 2002. He wrote Sunshine in 2007. He wrote Ex Machina, 2014, 2018's Annihilation, and of course, 2025's 28 Years Later. So he's an absolute pro and it shows here.

Of those, I have not seen The Beach and all of the other movies, I would put in a list of like top 50 films I've seen.

Yeah, they're great. Sunshine is divisive. I love it, but I know that some people don't.

I love Sunshine. Oh, that's like Danny Boyle's underappreciated film in my opinion.

I have to say my favorite Danny Boyle film is Millions, but that's a story for another day.

Same, same, yep.

So the, all right, I'm going to do this. Give me a, be patient. The composer on this was Hildur Gunna Dottir, which is an Icelandic name, so her father's name was presumably Gunna, or Gunna, G-U-O-N-A, Dottir. She also has some-

Hang on, hang on, hang on. Do you, is your last name like daughter or son? Yes, in Iceland, that's still true. Would her brother would have son appended to the name?

Yeah, so I know a woman from Iceland and her name is, everybody calls her Alfie because her last name is Alfie Dottir. So that's still the Viking Convention, still lives in Iceland. Okay, all right. She doesn't have a lot of writing credits, but the ones she has are all great. So my favorite TV series of the 21st century, Chernobyl, she did the score for that. She also did two of the Battlefield games in 2021, Battlefield 2042, A Haunting in Venice, directed by Kenneth Branagh, is a modernization of an Agatha Christie story. And she also wrote the score for Hedda, Nia DaCosta's previous film. So there's a lot of, one thing we haven't seen on this podcast that we get, you get more in modern film making is directors have people, right? Yeah. Pliny Stoods had the same editor for 40 years. And so not only did Nia DaCosta use Hilder to direct for two movies recently, she also had the same cinematographer who we'll get to next. His name is Sean Bobbitt. He actually has 61 DP credits. He did 2023's Marvels with Nia DaCosta. But two other interesting things he did are 2013, he did two great movies or one great movie and one movie I haven't seen, but I presume is great. He did 12 Years a Slave, which I have seen, and he did Old Boy, but not the Park Chan Wook Old Boy. He did the Spike Lee Old Boy. So if you don't know that Spike Lee in the last decade or so, he's really been trying to bring Asian cinema to life in America. So he did, I don't want to say shot for shot, but a very close remake of Old Boy, which was a great film from 2003. His last film, Highest to Lowest, is based on a Kira Kurosawa film from the 40s.

Okay, I did not know that.

That's what Spike is up to these days, and they're very good. The reason I want to mention that is he was director of photography on Old Boy. So the film I saw yesterday was No Other Choice, also by Park Chan Wook, who directed the original Old Boy. And so I just thought that connection was kind of fun, that the cinematographer was sort of in that loop.

So is there a famous hammer scene in Old Boy?

There's a famous hammer scene in Old Boy. It is it, that movie, the ending of that movie is messed up. It is also a great film. The original 2003 Old Boy is a must watch. Also know you'll be very upset by the end.

But I look forward to it.

Okay, so let's get to the cast. So first we got Chai Lewis Perry. He has 23 acting credits and five stunt credits. He plays Sampson. You'll remember Sampson from 28 Years Later. He has a much bigger role in this film, which we'll get to as we talk about it. Acting wise, he's been in, I think he's one of these English guys who just does a lot of local stuff. So he's been in both Ted Lasso and Slow Horses as an actor. I think he plays like bodyguards and stuff. But also he was the stunt double in Craven the Hunter, which makes sense. And then this is probably his biggest role in Bone Temple here. So he's a massive individual.

He is huge. I don't know. Even assuming there is some prosthetics like bulking him up, he is a huge guy.

He's, yeah. Other star here is Ralph Fiennes, who needs no introduction.

Ralph Fiennes, right?

I think he says Rafe.

Rafe? Does he?

Yeah, I'm almost sure.

Have I been saying his name?

Well, either way.

No, no, no. Say it however you want.

Since we're Americans, I'll say Ralph Fiennes. Yeah. Born in 1962, he has 99 acting credits, most famously 1993 Shinder List, Strange Days in 1995, a bunch of Harry Potter movies, his Voldemort.

Oh yeah.

He played M for Daniel Craig in several movies after Dame Judi Dench retired. He was in Skyfall and Spectre, 2022's The Menu, which is a delightful horror film and obviously 28 years later from last year. He's great all the time. So, you know, I don't know what else to say about him.

He is like an institution. Like he's one of those actors.

Yeah, like I included Strange Days here, not because everybody knows it, but because it's a great movie that I absolutely love. That is so different from Schindler's List or The English Payson. It just shows his diversity as an actor. So also Alfie Williams returns as Spike, who was in the first film. He's a little boy from the first film. He has six acting credits, not anything super famous though. He was in the TV adaptation in 2022 of His Dark Materials, and of course, 28 Years Later. The last person I mentioned, and then we'll get to it, Andy, is Erin Kellyman, who has 17 acting credits. She was born in 1998. She was in Solo, a Star Wars story. But more famously, she was in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, which is one of the very few good Marvel Universe TV shows. She was the, I don't want to say villain, she was the antagonist in that. She was in the Willow TV series, the 2025 movie Blitz and then, of course, the very end of 28 Years Later. She plays Jimmy Ink and we'll get to that. Oh, sorry, I have one more credit and it's another Jimmy. It's Jack O'Connell, who plays Sir Jimmy Crystal, sort of our main antagonist in this film. He's another one of those guys who's done a ton of British TV, though he has done a lot of movies, none of them super famous. However, he was in both 28 Years Later last year and Sinners as a Remic, which is another great film from last year. Which is, by the way, for those who don't follow the entertainment news, it is officially the most nominated film in Oscar history. As of today, I think it got 13 nominations, which beats out. I forget what it was, but one had 12.

One battle after another, maybe?

No, I mean, of all time. Like, by one nomination, it beat out. I can't even remember what the previous champ was. I think the previous record was 12 and it got 13. I could be wrong about that. You should check your facts. Treat me like you treat Chachi BT and check.

When I hear that stuff, it's always like, wow, that's fantastic. It must be great. And also, really, is it that?

That's exactly what I thought. Sinners is a great movie, but you sit there and you think about Unforgiven and Twelve Years a Slave and all these other Oscar winners, and you're like, really? But I don't want to knock that film. It's fantastic.

Of course not.

All right, Andy, that's all I have for you on this.

Okay, that is great.

That's my best producer, Brad Imitation. Do you want to do a quick 60-minute summary of this one? Because we're not going to do the full walkthrough like we often do with our movies, but let's do a 60-second summary of this movie, where it picks up and how it ends for our folks.

Yeah, before we start, we aren't doing trigger warning so much, but I do want to say this is a hard R movie, and it features some really upsetting violence.

Yeah, can I say? Well, finish the Dark Hotel story.

Yeah, we won't be going into graphic detail about the violence, but we will be discussing it because you have to reckon with the violence in this movie, I think, to engage with it. So if you are a little sensitive, just be aware.

Can I tell a quick story about that?

Please.

I saw it. So I was going to go see it by myself. I had tickets to like a 1.40 in the afternoon show, and my son was going to go see it with his friends, but they switched times and he couldn't go. So he's like, well, I'll just go with you. I'm like, great, we'll go to a movie together. It'll be fun. Then it started and it starts really hard, really brutal, and I was sitting there going. I even said to him, I was to watch the movie, I'm like, I can't believe I'm watching this with my son. And he goes, Dad, I turned 19 in two months. I'm like, I know.

It doesn't matter.

And he's like, I was going to go see it with my friends anyway. I'm like, I know, but I remember when you were three years old running around in your Batman costume and I don't feel, I don't feel like it's appropriate to show that kid this movie, even though you're not that anymore. So anyway, you know, the violence is not super well, no, it keeps getting rough throughout. So anyway, I settled in after a while once I got really engaged in the movie.

Yeah, there's really like, there's two, well, we'll talk about it. There's two scenes, like one is the kind of shocking, like, okay, we're watching a horror movie that you get like a minute in. Then there is an extended scene that's like less about being gross and more about just being incredibly tense and uncomfortable later that we'll talk about. Very difficult to watch. But all right, John, I'm gonna do kind of a 60 second overview of this movie. And then after that, John, I jotted down about a half dozen kind of zombie movie tropes or themes that I think were evident in this film that I want us to talk about. And then of course, there will be space for you to provide your own. And we'll just see where it goes. Okay.

All right. Sounds great.

So 28 years later, The Bone Temple picks up almost immediately after the first movie ends. It ended on a cliffhanger. And The Bone Temple shifts. It alternates between two primary storylines. One is the storyline that follows Spike, the boy from the first movie, as he is forcibly inducted into a murderous, satanic cult led by a psychopath who calls himself Jimmy Crystal.

Sir Jimmy Crystal.

Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal. The second storyline follows Ray Fiennes' Dr. Kelson, who is attempting to befriend and ultimately even cure Sampson, who is a terrifying quote alpha male infected. And those storylines come together in a really unexpected and amazing way at the Bone Temple that Kelson maintains, which is a big sort of ossuary or memorial to the dead. And it ends with Sampson being cured or partially cured, and with both Jimmy and Kelson dying after a pretty wild encounter at the Bone Temple. So John, how is that? Did I miss anything big?

You know what? You missed the very end, but we should save that for the very end as well.

Yes. Yeah, for sure.

I don't want to talk about that. So no, I think that's it. So let's get into your themes. I do want to say one thing, though, and I meant to say this when I ran down the cast, but let me just start with this before we get to your themes. I don't know much about Nia DaCosta as a director, but what I do know is that she's good at directing actors, because all the performances, with the possible exception of poor Alfie Williams' Spike, in this movie are fantastic. There's not a stinker among them. Jack O'Connell, who I have not seen in a ton of stuff, as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal is terrifying and amazing. Ralph slash Ralph Fiennes is amazing. Jimmy Ink, who plays the girl who rebels against Jimmy Crystal, is amazing. I just was blown away by the whole thing.

I agree. If this movie has a weakness, he isn't given much to work with in this movie. Although it's ostensibly following him, he's along for the ride with these very charismatic other characters that just simply you could not outshine some of these other performances, especially as a kid actor.

That's my one complaint is that he was so great in the first movie. He's pretty sidelined here for everybody else. But I mean, it's still ultimately his story, but it's really about everybody else in this movie.

Yeah. All right. So, John, first thing I jotted down and we'll start tame and we'll turn up the intensity with these themes as we go along. I just noted that this is a movie, a zombie movie set many years into the apocalypse. So as the title tells you 28 years later, we're a whole generation into the apocalypse. So while the population of non-infected people in Britain is probably pretty small at this point, I mean, it's possible that you were born and you grew up in this world.

Well, that's Alfie's story, right? He's one of the children of people who were very young when the outbreak happened, who have grown up into adulthood during the last 30 years and are now having children.

So John, so what this means is that people have adapted to survive in this world.

Yes.

Like if you're still alive, it's because you learned how to live and even thrive in a way in this world. Right. So in the first 28 years later, we see a whole kind of village on an island that has managed to restore some semblance of normalcy. In this movie, there's a fortified farm that clearly is the product of many years of rigging a safe shelter, right?

Right.

We see people going on scavenging runs and stuff who are following rigid strategies and tactics that they've learned to live by. And I'm just wondering, what do you think you can do with zombies 30 years into the apocalypse that is different than what you get on day zero of the apocalypse?

Well, what's interesting is, well, I'll say a couple of things about this. So first off, the first movie did more with different kinds of zombies. So for example, there were those sort of worm-eating, really obese zombies, pasty zombies that crawled on the ground. Those are absent here. We stick with just Samson the Alpha and just sort of general rage-infected zombies. Here's one thing I want to say, though. I think at the end of, and I think because they had no intention of doing sequels, at the end of 28 Days Later, our heroes are safe because the infected start to starve, right?

Yes.

And one thing that has changed in the universe for these movies is somehow the infected have learned also adapted the apocalypse, and they don't just die of starvation. They actually have enough intelligence to survive, right? Either by eating wild animals or like the giant, like the grotesque beast ones in the first movie, the worms and crawling things. So these are different than 28 Days Later. I don't think you can really, it's a retcon. It's not a 28 Days Later, I had no intention of doing this. So also the infected have had to learn to survive.

Yes. So it is kind of interesting that this movie does drop all of, to be quite honest, the infected are not really in this movie very much. No. We have one infected, Sampson, who's in it a lot, and there's maybe three total encounters with what you might call a zombie encounter.

Yeah, and one of them is-

They're short and quick.

One of them is by Sampson. Yes. So the other thing I'll say is, I think also that I knew this, but it didn't really process for me. The infected in these films are not dead. They're infected, so they don't wear clothes and they're dumb, and a lot of them probably freeze to death, but they're smart enough to survive and they're still alive, which almost makes it more horrifying.

Well, let me combine this then with another point I wanted to raise, which was just this idea of the evolution of the infected or of the zombie. Yes. Like you say, by the time this movie rolls around, when you see the infected, they're really more like wild animals. They feel like wild animals more than they feel like undead horrors or shambling monsters. Does that make sense?

It does.

I mean, they kind of hunt you in packs. They have like a societal pyramid at which Samson is on the top because he's the biggest and strongest and can kill anyone he wants. And then he goes down from there. We learned in the previous movie, you know, like they reproduce. Yes. So it's... But they are still... And we learned some things. This is the first 28 Days Years movie where we, I think where we see something like from the perspective of the infected. Yes. That gives us our first hint at like their inner life. Do you want to say what that is, John?

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. At one point, there's a no-name character who is just walking through the woods. We don't know where they're from. But he gets caught by Samson. And as Samson is about to kill him, we get a flash from Samson's perspective, and that person's face looks like a rage-infected zombie looking back at him. And he's killing him because he doesn't want to be killed, is almost the sense you got. In addition, he wants to show his power. But he doesn't do this to other infected. So there's something about the psychology of Samson and his brain chemistry that has changed so that he sees regular people as we see infected, basically.

Yeah, and this movie sort of lands on suggesting that the problem, calling it a mental condition or something is a little trite and insulting, I suppose. But the thing that makes you infected is like something has been, your brain has just been rewired. But so that the living people around, the uninfected people around you look terrifying and scary to you, and you can't control your impulse, your rage-filled impulses. But zombie movies will often dangle, the characters in zombie movies often wonder, is there anything left in there of the people I love? And this movie says, yes, there is something left in there. It's just buried under a lot of other very powerful stuff.

Yeah, and we'll get to it more later, I think in one of your future themes, but I've never seen a movie that humanizes a zombie as much as this one does.

Yes, absolutely.

There's some I haven't seen, but ultimately the zombie's inner life is sort of the crux of the film in a lot of ways.

Yeah, so I want to come back to that, because we've said we are spoiling everything. So yeah, Dr. Kelson does partially cure Samson. I want to circle back to that to the end. But let me move on to something, and this is kind of a pretty obvious one, but this movie features something. It's a trope that is all over modern zombie cinema. In the Zombie Strains podcast up through 1964, 65, I think we are only just now starting to see hints of it, and that is the post-apocalyptic psychos.

Yeah, and pseudo-religious cult.

Yeah, so tell us, we have full on post-apocalyptic psychos in this movie. They are the main antagonists of the movie. They are way more scary and dangerous. Well, no, they are. The infected are pretty scary in this, but I still think these psychos are significantly worse.

I think so, too.

John, tell us about the psychos in this movie.

They are deliciously wicked, but also very upsetting. The first thing that upset me, well, what has happened is the...

They don't do anything that isn't upsetting. I know.

They only do upsetting things. What has happened is the boy from the very beginning of 28 Years Later, his...

Spike.

No, the other boy.

Oh, right, right, right.

The boy who escapes and who sees his father become... His father, the priest, become a rage zombie and then lead the horde of zombies.

He's... Yeah, and just to be clear, he's in like the pre-credits sequence of 28 Years Later. And then you really don't see him at all for that entire movie until like the last 30 seconds. Right.

And these are the ninjas, the tracksuit-wearing ninjas who kill the infected and save Spike at the end. Which was exciting, except for what we learned is they do not have good intentions. In fact, they're led by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, who is the disciple of Satan, who is his father. He means that literally. And he is a member, you know, the cult here has seven fingers or the seven hands. So Spike is not immediately invited into the cult. He has to fight his way in. He has to kill one of the current members of the cult. So we're introduced first to this horrific scene, and Spike actually succeeds accidentally in killing one of the other members and becomes a member of this cult. And while a lot of the stress and a lot of the reason he is sidelined is that he doesn't want to do this. This is literally just the only way he can survive. If he doesn't do this, they'll kill him or the infected will. So he tries to avoid behaving them. But this group's goal is to kill all other people and in brutal and cruel ways because they essentially worship Satan.

Yeah, and like literally worship Satan.

Yes.

It's a fascinatingly childlike conception of Satanism.

Well, this is the interesting thing. Like they constantly invoke the Teletubbies, because if you remember that pre-credit sequence, all the kids were locked in a room watching the Teletubbies with the infected rage through the house. And they do Teletubby dances and all this stuff. Well, they're insane and skinning people alive. But yeah, it's very childlike. I enjoyed the sort of rituals and the sort of slang that is particular to their cults. So for example, they don't call Satan Satan, they call him Old Nick. Old Nick, and instead of saying amen, they say, is that right, right? Is that what they say? Yeah.

I think they say a how's that.

How's that, yeah. So Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal will be speaking to the other Jimmies. Everyone is named Jimmy. There's Jimmy Ink and Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal.

Yeah. When you join the cult, you take on the name Jimmy.

Yes. And when he gives a sermon, everybody says, how's that? As if to say amen. So I enjoyed that aspect, but they're so cruel. They were so hard to watch at several points in this film.

Yes. So can we talk about Jimmy Crystal? Can I just say, I just love that he calls himself Sir Lord. And I think my favorite line in the movie is when Aaron Kellyman's character who's starting to doubt Jimmy's leadership says, I don't even know if he's a real Sir Lord.

Yes. Yeah. She is delightful in this movie, too. So she plays the role of Spike is really trying to escape. And they're so cruel. She is the one that has just a little bit of heart left. And so when Spike can't handle, like when they're flaying people alive and Spike has to leave the barn to throw up, like she comes and sits with him. Like she is the closest thing to somebody with a heart in this group.

Yeah, there is a lot of nuance in her performance because she is a faithful member of this cult and she believes in what they're doing.

But she's not completely cruel yet.

Yes, but there's a sliver of humanity in her that will emerge more fully at the end of the movie. But I don't know a lot about how cults work, but her challenge to Jimmy's leadership isn't really like, hey, this guy is a murderous psycho. It's more like, I don't think this guy is fit to lead. Maybe he's not even living up to our cult standards.

I don't think she realizes he might not even know old Nick. Like he might have been making that old Nick being his dad, he might have been making that up. He's a liar. He's not what he says he is. That's why she's upset. Also, I think at that point, she does want to protect Spike.

Yes, and if it's not clear, so the Jimmy's spend much time with this guy and you become just a brainwashed psycho. So all of these people, with the exception really of Jimmy Ink, Aaron Kellerman's character, are just pretty much the Joker levels of insane.

Yep. And Jimmy Crystal, the guy, Jack O'Donnell's Jimmy Crystal, he nails it. He is so, because rather than just being a psychopath, he does turn up the charm. He's got a wink and a smile and a soothing voice. He does a great job. Not that you think you would follow him in our modern society, but you can see why he's the leader and they are all subservient to him. He's powerful and charming and delightfully wicked.

So did you do any reading about who his character is based on, John?

My understanding is he's based on a former TV presenter in the UK who ended up molesting a bunch of children. Is that correct? I didn't get the details.

Yeah. He's based on Jimmy Savile. I think this is something if you're a British audience, you pick up this instantly. It sailed just completely over my American head. But he was an incredibly popular, basically celebrity presenter for decades in Britain.

He was like Mr. Rogers.

Yeah. And he had this very distinct visual style. He wore those really colorful outfits that Jimmy in this movie does. He had that white hair that Jimmy's always, all the Jimmy's wear these bleached white legs.

Straw blonde, so blonde it's white.

Yeah. And he even had a slogan Jimmy Savile did. He had a slogan, he always said it was, how's about that then?

Oh, so when they say how's that, that's they're directly imitating that.

So he was Savile was revealed after his death to be a horrible predator, like hundreds of victims. And I think even towards the end of his life, allegations were coming out. But it is interesting. So Jimmy, as a British kid, that would have been one of the TV personalities he saw. And he adopted, I don't know what the film, if the film is doing any commentary beyond that. I mean, both of these are evil people, but they're evil in quite different ways, I think. So I don't know what connections we're supposed to draw.

I also think that like, I think by presenting him in that way, I think we're just trying to, they're just trying to say, this is an irredeemable person. I think a British audience would mark him as irredeemable in a way that we don't mark Sampson, which we'll get to in a minute.

Yes, for sure. A couple of things just on the place of these post-apocalyptic psychos. First of all, do you know what movie I have in mind when I am saying that I can think of one movie we've watched up through the mid-60s that is hinting at this humans are the real monsters trope that is now ubiquitous in zombie fiction?

I'm trying to think.

Hint, it's a recent one.

It's not The Last Man on Earth, is it?

I would say it was The Earth Dies Screaming.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

We have the character Quinn in that. He is not a lunatic psychopath.

No, but he is all out for himself.

Yeah, he is explicitly saying some fairly mild versions of stuff that people in The Walking Dead are constantly saying, like, there's no rules anymore. I can do whatever I want.

I can remake society however I want it to be.

Exactly. It's a new world. All right, I want to see if I had any other things I jotted down about these psychos. Oh, just that, like these, I mean, so at this point, if you're a horror movie fan, you've seen a gazillion movies where the theme is like, well, this is a movie about aliens or a movie about zombies, but obviously humans are the real monsters in this movie, right? And, you know, so it's a pretty, if I had a critique of the portrayal of these people, I profoundly did not enjoy the torture sequences of those movies. I did not either. I profoundly didn't enjoy them. And I think at this point, I don't really need to see that to get what you're doing, what you're saying.

Yeah, I think so at this point, this is what I'm worried about when we get to the 80s, probably. Maybe the 70s a little bit. Like, can I take it? Me, too. There was a moment in this film where I was like, do I really want to watch this? Like, it was so awful.

I had the same thought while watching it. And then I have had the same worry since I got back. I was like, what if we're going to see some pretty nasty stuff, I suspect. Like, do I have the stomach for this podcast?

We're old now. Like, I think the only reason you could take it is because, and if this is a segue for you, I'm glad, because the story of Sampson and Dr. Ian Kelsner, Kelsner? I can't remember.

Dr. Ian... Kel-Kelson.

Yeah. So the reason I think I could take it is that the story between Sampson and Dr. Ian Kelsen of the NHS is so tender in a way.

Yes.

And that made me love this movie.

Yeah. So we've been talking about the incredibly bleak, one story line of this movie. But what you said is true, John. What makes us tolerable is this is alternating between the sweetest story line you will find in a zombie movie. So tell us what is going on with Dr. Kelsen as we are alternating between scenes of people being tortured to death.

Yeah. Before we do that, I just want to describe Dr. Kelsen's life, because you don't get that much of it in 28 years later. But he is going around and he is doing what he started, but he's in 28 years later, which is like finding dead people and very respectfully burying them. He doesn't bury them, but this temple looks creepy. But to him, it is a memory of all the people who died, and he really believes in that vision. And we get to see more of his life in that he has the blow darts that he used to knock out Sampson. But also at night, what he has to do is lock himself in an underground bunker that the infected can't get in. And what he does is relive the 80s when he was young, and he listens to Duran Duran. That's a big thing. The first thing he does after a day out working in the Bone Temple is he goes in and he takes off his clothes and cleans up and he listens to Girls on Film by Duran Duran, and dances around very clumsily in his little underground bunker. It's kind of amazing.

The music in this, I mean, both the music that was written for this film and the needle drops that they chose are just uniformly good.

There's more Duran Duran and during the big sequence at the end, there's a wonderful use of Iron Maiden that we'll get to. But so here's what I'll say. So what he discovers early on in the film is the blow darts. The blow darts contain morphine is what we find out. And as the infected are not dead, what we learn is that Sampson is addicted to morphine. So when he comes close at the beginning of this movie to Dr. Kelson, he's trying to hold himself back because he doesn't want to kill Dr. Kelson. He wants Dr. Kelson to hit him with a blow dart so he can get his high. And as the movie goes, the morphine does turn Sampson into a... Not completely. He's still infected and Kelson still fears him. But when he is on morphine, he is more human than he's been since the outbreak, is the sense that you get. He gets this sense of peace. One thing I love about it is the first time they do this, Kelson zaps him with the morphine dart and he heals him because he's got some arrows in him and stuff. And he says, don't worry, Sampson, I'm not going to overcharge you for this. I'm NHS, which is just one of my favorite lines in this movie. But Dr. Kelson is so sweet and I love that. I love David Lynch movies, but my favorite David Lynch movie probably is The Straight Story, which is the one that's all hearts. I am a sucker for this kind of thing, and it's really done beautifully here. We see them playing together and you realize Dr. Kelson is incredibly lonely. And once he tamed Sampson, he starts playing music for him and dancing with him. And it's just, it's amazing.

Talking to him, he speaks to him so respectfully. Yes, he speaks to him with respect like he's a person.

Like he's a patient, and his friend.

Yes, exactly. It's really neat. And so, one of the central moments in this film is that at one point, Kelson tells Sampson, hey, I'm almost out of morphine. So, when that happens, Sampson can't get his fix, but also, Kelson can't be safe around Sampson because there'll be nothing to soften the rage impulses, and he is going to euthanize Sampson. But he is, I think, haunted by the possibility that there is still a human in there.

And early in the film, he says, with the first time he settles him down with morphine and talks to him, he says, I just need to hear one word from you to know there's somebody. And as he's about to euthanize Sampson, Sampson is looking up at the moon, and Sampson just says, moon. And literally, this needle is in his arm, and he's about to depress the plunger, and he pulls the needle out and chooses not to kill Sampson because he says moon.

Yeah, it was an incredible scene.

Yeah, that was amazing.

So, stepping back a little bit, I do think we see in Kelson and the Jimmies and some other people in this movie. I mean, we start to see these kind of archetypal ways that people choose to live in a zombie apocalypse. You've got the nihilistic psychos, the Jimmies, that's well-trod ground in horror film. You have the, you don't see a ton of them in this movie, but you have the hunker down and survivors, the people that they, all they're trying to do is get safe and eke out a life that is as close to what they remember normalcy being as they can. And the best example of that is in the first 28 Years Later with that village, where they have not maybe a good life, but they have found something that's worth living there.

It's like they live in the 19th century, kind of.

Right. But they're not going anywhere with that exactly. But then you have your Dr. Kelsons, who, Dr. Kelsons, he's really, he's a visionary. Like, he's living, he is living, he sees like a possibility of life that neither of those first two groups sees. Right. Because despite the incredible danger to himself, he sees, he wants to, he sees a world in which we are living like in equilibrium or even some kind of community with the infected, which is a crazy idea, right? And it's crazy, but that's why it's powerful. Like it's just crazy enough that there might be something to it.

And I think it's so important that he's a doctor, right? Because what he does is, it's actually, you know, most zombie movies have some quick patter from some scientists about how all this is happening. When Ralph Fiennes delivers it, when Dr. Kelson delivers it about the zombies, it's just very thoughtful and you believe he's actually thought it through. And he says, you know, I, like I know the infection takes over your brain, but there must be a psycho, there must be a psychological change too. It's not just physical. And so there must be, if it's psychological, psychological medications should be able to help, right? So he thinks he's found a way to maybe, maybe cure them.

Yes. So, all right. Well, John, I had written down a couple more things to maybe talk about, and I'm trying to decide if I want to do it. One of them, I think, would drag us back to an unpleasant topic, but I'm just going to mention it briefly. So there's an extended torture scene in this movie, extended. It's really hard to watch.

It's hard to watch, mostly, it's hard to watch totally, but also because the pregnant wife of one of the people being tortured is hiding in the shadows, watching it. So it's like triple upsetting.

In dread, like waiting for, yeah. So for what it's worth, she does get away.

That's a sad scene for Spike, because Spike, she escapes, and Spike is the first to catch up to her, and he goes, please take me with you, get me away from these psychos. And she doesn't know him from Adam, so she kicks him in the nuts and runs away, which I felt so bad for Spike right there. It was sort of his one big scene in this movie where you really feel for him, yeah.

So it did make me think, though, there is a type of horror that is about watching people suffer, right?

The most extreme example being something like Martyrs or something, that French film where torture is the point or one of the hostile movies or whatever.

Exactly, yeah. So I mean, the colloquial phrase I've heard for this genre is torture porn, right? And it is definitely horror.

And I avoid that normally.

Oh yeah, I have a real, I mean, I mean, I don't judge anyone, they're entertainment, but I don't like this and I don't watch it. And I dread that it's going to cross paths with the zombie genre at some point in the future. But I just wanted to say so, like, John, in a regular Zombie Strains timeline, we're in like the mid-60s, and this is where the first movies of that type are going to be made.

Yes, in Italy probably.

Yes, in fact, yeah, in fact, in Italy. So in like the early 60s, there's this trilogy of Blood by Herschel Gordon Lewis, which is not torture exactly, but it's like extreme splatter and gore, which is also kind of a related genre. But yeah, there's a movie called Bloody Pit of Horror in 1965, and it's an Italian film, and it's about a bunch of people trapped in basically a torture dungeon. And then a few more films get made. And in the 70s, this really comes out in a lot of explication films.

You get Cannibal Holocaust and all kinds of really just dark, dark stuff in the 70s.

You do. And so most of this genre, I think is generally dismissed. And again, no judgment if this is your thing. But this is kind of considered-

We are in no position to judge anybody because we're watching all the zombie movies. I mean, yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, but I think, I think a word you would use to describe this genre of film, which includes some real dire films that I think are hard to justify. Yeah. Yes. But we call this just kind of trash, right? Like the real trashy horror. It does occasionally pop up to the mainstream, right?

There's like Martyrs, like I said, that's a top-end French filmmaker making that movie.

Yeah. Or a film like Deliverance. You know? Like it occasionally gets in, and the kind of the Saw and the Hostel movies kind of gave it this like modern, like not pretentious, but this kind of modern gloss of like a cool mainstream film.

Yes, because they made The Torture cool.

Yes. So mostly, I just wanted to bring it up, John, because I don't... Oh, and I would even say it works its way into other genres. Like, I mean, I don't... One of the reasons I don't watch the game, I didn't watch Game of Thrones, is because there's enough of this in there that I didn't, it just kind of killed my interest in the show.

There was an action movie on Netflix, somebody's like, oh, this is a banger. And it involved them strapping somebody to a block of ice and torturing them or something. I was like, I'm out, I don't want to watch that. It sort of worked its, I think... Well, let me say that again. It's just sort of worked its way into every genre at this point.

Yeah. So to be clear, I think actually The Bone Temple is being... I don't think it is trying to tap into the base thrill that you get from watching people suffer. You're supposed to be repulsed by it, and you are, I mean, it really is repulsive. But it is just a part of horror. John, I just think that we should probably brace ourselves for the zombie genre to cross paths with this.

Absolutely.

All right, that's all I want to say. I've talked too much about something I didn't really enjoy talking about. But so I want to, there's one more thing I just wanted to mention here, John, and I want to open up to any like scenes that you wanted to just call out. And that is just, we don't see, like zombie movies don't seem like a very religious type of horror.

No.

Generally speaking, despite having these religious adjacent stuff like The Resurrection of the Dead, I know there are movies that will play on that in maybe sometimes a snarky way. But generally speaking, you know, you don't have your priests and your crucifixes and your religious faiths and the like, I mean, it's not like the Exorcist or, you know, there are, there is a vein of religious horror often involves haunting or poltergeist or possession.

But this is, but that's rarely seen in a zombie movie.

Yeah. And if I were to say, you know, I don't think most people that survive through a zombie apocalypse and are starring in these movies. Like, you just don't see too many people that are religious anymore.

No.

Like, because, you know, this zombie apocalypse would be an awfully hard thing to just reconcile with basically any faith system. Correct. Except perhaps Satanism as we learn in this movie. So, I thought this movie, you know, this felt like a very humanist movie to me. And like one of, like, Jimmy Crystal and his fingers are, I mean, they're insane psychos, right? They're mentally unwell. But, you know, they are the religious characters in this movie. Their vision of a life after the zombie apocalypse is kind of a theocratic one. Like, they're following orders from a divine thing.

Yes.

And it is sort of, you know, one of the things, I think, that lets Jimmy Ink kind of break out of it towards the end is realizing that none of this was real. Like, they weren't doing this because Satan was telling them to do it. They were just, they were making, they were people making choices to do these things.

And you know, it's interesting about that is that I think at some point Jimmy believed that his father was, in fact, Satan, because he saw his, because he was a small boy who saw his father get, in a priest's robe, get bitten by an infected and turn into one of them and sort of lead the charge of the infected. And I think part of his mind really thought that is the devil. You know what I mean? Yes.

Well, I think, I think, I think one of the greatest elements of Jimmy as a character and the acting performance is that you can buy him both as someone who has bought into this, like, heavy metal album cover version of Satanism. I think he believes it all on one level. And when he says he hears Satan's voice, I don't think he's lying exactly. He is also, however, shown to be a cynical, manipulating con man.

Can I just stop and say, I think a lot of cult leaders are just that, right? Like, like we could even pick a Christian evangelist who fell from faith, like Jim Baker. I think he was both a true believer and a cynic who was stealing people's money. Like, both of those things are true. And I think Jimmy is real in that same way. He both believes in Satan and their mission and realizes he has to psychologically manipulate these people to keep them worshipping him.

Yes, exactly. And I do think, you know, not to make a big pretentious point, but I do think when we talk about people who, when we talk about the problem of like, you know, fraud or deception or manipulation in sort of a religious context in real life, I do think we sometimes miss that nuance of like, can this person just be a horrible manipulator who's in it for the money? Yep. But it's not that easy to separate that out from the true believers.

No. And a lot of cult leaders, I think, really believe what they're saying. I think it's a mistake to assume a cult leader is only cynical and knows exactly where their lies are. I think it's a combination. I think that's what you're saying.

Yes. And yeah, totally. And I just found it interesting that this movie has the most over-the-top religious cult. This is a parody of a cult, right?

Jimmy and his seven fingers, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they worship Satan. I mean, it's just so silly, but it managed to capture, I think, a real dynamic of people towards their faith and in Jimmy's relationships with the fingers, I think there's something. And in Jimmy Ink's, like, starting to question, I think there's a weird nuance in the least subtle religious community I've ever seen portrayed on film.

And I will say, as unpleasant as their behavior is, I was glued to the screen whenever Jimmy was giving a sermon about Old Jim or something. Like, he really was great at being compelling when preaching.

There's a scene towards the end when, so I guess let's just kind of talk about kind of how the movie wraps up and where it leaves us. But so there's a scene towards the end. These paths kind of come together when the Jimmies, the Jimmies learn that Dr. Kelson is-

Can I ask a question, actually? So, Jimmy Ink is sent to do something, and I can't figure out what it was, but what she does is observe-

So, can I probably say? So, I saw this with my wife. She and I discussed what was she doing. I think she was going out to hunt for the pregnant woman who escaped.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. But she doesn't run across that woman. She runs across Dr. Kelson dancing in front of Sampson, and she comes back and says, I've seen old Nick.

Yes.

Because who but the devil would cavort with an infected.

And remember, he's doing this in this bone mausoleum he's built.

Yes, it literally looks like hell.

So, it's like literal piles of skulls. So, it's actually delightful, I mean, from a story perspective, how these two storylines cross paths. And step in anytime, John, you wanna make an additional point or whatever. But I was gonna say, so Jimmy Crystal's like, well, we gotta go meet St. Nick. But he's nervous because-

He's in a spot, right? Because he's saying, Old Nick is my dad, literally. And he knows his dad is dead, or at least an infected. So he- But he is, interestingly, goes along, because I think, again, he's not completely cynical.

Yes, I think, I mean, I was really trying to suss that out. Like, I mean, I think he wants to maybe believe that that really is Old Nick on some level. But there is this conversation. So various things happen. But it ends with Jimmy Crystal goes up to meet with Dr. Kelson and they are having a conversation.

Which is a wonderful scene.

It's my, it's, I think, my favorite scene in the movie. And they are having this kind of frank conversation. And the performance of Jimmy is so charismatic that you want to like him, despite you have just seen him do the worst possible things.

And there's a moment where like-

Ten minutes earlier, you saw him doing the worst imaginable things.

Yeah. And it's interesting because Kelson is so, like he's, he's being defensive. Kelson is not, he's trying to not end. He clearly sees that Jimmy Crystal is crazy. So he doesn't want to antagonize him, but he also doesn't back off from being frank with him. He's like, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm not Satan, I'm just a doctor. And Jimmy responds to him. It's almost like two different kinds. Someone once said to me, and I think this is a great thing, talking about salespeople, because I'm always like salespeople are like, sociopaths or something. He's like, well, there's two kinds, right? There's the really sort of sociopathic ones who care nothing about you, but pretend to, and it's not like they're killers or anything, but it's a little unsettling. But there's another kind that are deeply human people who generally want to help you out and genuinely want to get to know you. And I think the same is true. Like a good pastor at a church is like Dr. Kelson, and a strong cult leader is like Jimmy Crystal. And it's sort of like two sides of that same coin coming together. You know what I mean? They both are religious, right? He's literally built a temple to the dead. So in his own way, he's sort of a pastor for his own religion. And he does it with such, he's the pastor you always hope you'd get when you want to talk to about a death in your family or something, right?

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I love Kelson so much. What a great character.

Yeah, and that, and the, but the conversation between the two of them is so good for these reasons, because it's not like Kelson is nervously just trying to get rid of him or anything. Like, he wants to talk to Jimmy Crystal. He knows he's nuts, but you know what? This is a guy who hangs around with infecteds, who could rip his head off. So he's not scared of Jimmy Crystal.

Yeah, and in fact, Kelson, at some point in the conversation, you know, Jimmy basically says, we've gotta, we have to figure this out, because if you don't help me convince my followers that you're old, Nick, I will kill you. And Kelson, we later learn, he's, Kelson later expresses that he was scared, but he wasn't scared of dying. He was scared because what would happen to Sampson if he weren't around anymore? And like, just what a beautiful character he is.

But he also takes Glee. Can we talk about, are you ready to talk about the end?

Yeah, please. So just tell us, tell us, summarize how it ends, and then we'll go into the details that we want to talk about.

So the way it ends is, they come to an agreement that he, that Kelson is going to pretend to be the devil, and Jimmy is going to bring all the other Jimmy's down, and they're going to interact with the devil. And so what he does is he pulls out his Iron Maiden Number of the Beast album. He has this little giant PA speaker, and he hooks it up, he can generate power. So he puts on this costume where he looks like Satan, which involves him wearing a leather apron, so he can throw around ash and fire. And it is just such an amazing set piece. So when the Jimmy's come in, and he has the PA going, and the number of the beast starts up, 666 is the number of the beast. And they're just wowed. And then he comes out in this costume throwing fire around, and they immediately fall and worship him. Meanwhile, Jimmy Crystal is like, not bad. Like, wow, good job. It's extraordinary. It doesn't have a ton to do with the movie, but it's so fun. I can't resist it.

Yeah, exactly. So, but then how does it end and yeah.

Well, so.

Like, how does the big performance scene end? Because this is where, you know, Jimmy Crystal's story and Kelsen's come to a close.

Yeah, so what happens is, I think Kelsen is a survivor also. So he's like, I'm going to send these folks on their way. And two things happen. So the Jimmy's are wearing masks when they first come in, and Spike, who was wearing a mask, doesn't take it off till the end. And what happens is, Kelsen is reluctantly giving Jimmy Crystal permission to be the evil cult leader, sort of as Satan, he's giving him this permission. But then he sees Spike, and he says, I have one more commandment. You must do a sacrifice. And he tells the other Jimmy's, they have to sacrifice Jimmy Crystal. And then all hell breaks loose. Jimmy Crystal stabs Kelsen. All this stuff happens, but they grab him and they crucify him upside down next to Kelsen, who is slowly bleeding out. But Spike gets to come together with Dr. Kelsen and get his blessing. And the only survivors really are Spike and Jimmy Ink. What did she say her real name is at the end? Is it...

A Kelly, I think.

I think it was just Kelly or something, yeah.

Yeah, we see her carving a K, too, into a tree earlier in the film. So she hasn't let go of her old self entirely. But yeah, so at the end, yeah, so Jimmy Ink... Yeah, so the final... In the final moments of that scene, Jimmy Ink and Spike head off together, and Samson comes to pick up the body of Dr. Kelton.

Yeah, can we talk about how Samson got this way just real quick?

Please, we have a big scene we haven't talked about related to Samson.

Yeah, let's go back and do that. So just before all this happened, what happens is he realizes he's running out of morphine. Jimmy has come-

By the way, can I just say, this was the part of the movie where I was like, I think it's safe to go to the bathroom now, so I ran out, and then I missed, I was only gone for 90 seconds, but I missed the horror part of this movie.

Oh, no. So anyway, what happens is he says, so I think there's a psychological, physiological brain chemistry component to this illness, and he's like, I'm running out of morphine, and now I've got this psycho coming to probably kill me, and I was going to try to cure you slowly using these drugs, but I just have to give it a shot now, and he shoves a handful of meds down Samson's throat, and they're all psychological meds. And what we see is Samson sort of wandering around the landscape, recovering his humanity. And this is a scene that could be really schmaltzy and done really poorly, but what happened, they do two things that are great at it. One is, rather than just have him open up and become human again, at one point, he just sees a blackberry growing on a bush, and he just takes it and he eats it, and you can just see the pleasure on his face, like he's started to come back to himself. But then, to keep it from being schmaltzy, the other infected can tell he's no longer infected, so they attack him, but he is still the strongest, so he kills a bunch of infected with his bare hands without losing his humanity again. So, when he comes back to find Kelsen's body, before Kelsen dies, he looks at Kelsen and he says, thank you, and then he picks up Kelsen's body and walks away. So.

Yeah. Okay, so hey John, let's talk about, we should wrap this up, but I want to talk about the movie's basically closing scene, which is a cliffhanger.

Yes, I have a funny story about this closing scene too. So do you want to tell people what happens?

I'll tell people what happens, but I do want to hear your funny story. So, we switch after this has happened, we switch, and we see for the first time in many a movie, we see Killian Murphy's character Jim from the first 28 Days Later movie. And just to be clear, Jim has not been seen in this movie franchise since that first movie.

What I presume is the daughter, his own daughter, but his wife or the woman who gave birth to the daughter would be the woman who rescued him initially in 28 Days Later.

Yes, so we see him, we see his daughter, who he's teaching history, World War II history, which is a very middle-aged dad thing to be doing. So we pointedly don't see any sign of Selina or Hannah, the two people that were with Jim at the end of 28 Days Later. But we do see Jim has a daughter, probably the daughter of him and Selina, although we don't know this for sure. And she's getting ready for a test, a history test, that he's going to give her the next day, which is really cute.

About the Weimar Republic.

Yeah, and they hear a commotion outside, though, and they go running outside, and we learn they still live in this infected, zombified Britain, and they see two characters that we recognize as Spike and Jimmy Ink from a distance, running across, running around being chased, pursued by a bunch of infected. And in this movie's thesis statement, after we have just seen these different and sometimes harrowing ways that people have chosen to live in this zombie world, the daughter says, dad, should we help them? And there's this long pause, and you think that he is weighing the pros and cons of helping them, but he's not, and he ended up saying, of course we do. And then they head off, and then the movie ends. That felt like the movie's kind of moral thesis statement.

I think that's why the movie lands. It does show the horror of humanity, but rather than just resting on that, it's like an arch movie that disturbs you. It says, yes, but look at Dr. Kelson, look at Jim.

It is, despite what you have seen in this movie, this is not a bleak movie. No. It is, my wife used the word, to describe the first 28 years later movie, she used the word transcendent. Like that, that was a beautiful movie. This movie is darker.

Yep.

But it is not a hopeless sort of darkness.

Yeah, it is half dark and half joyful, actually. You know, and those things coming together make it really good.

So I've wondered, I don't know if I read this somewhere or it occurred to me, but this feels to me like the Empire Strikes Back of this trilogy.

It does.

I mean, it depends a lot on what they do with the final movie, which I'm very, very eager to see what they do with it. But this is like, it just felt to me like the dark passage, the middle chapter.

Yeah, my son's one complaint was that it's not a fully finished movie, you know what I mean? Which I think is fair, but also so hard to do if you know you're in the middle of a trilogy. No demerits to DaCosta for not landing that, because she landed everything else in this movie. Exactly.

So hey, John, let's hear your story.

So my son and I, I wasn't sure. I left the movie and I was feeling a little rattled because of everything we'd seen. My son and I are driving home and we had to stop at the grocery store because I didn't have fresh ginger for the dinner we were making. We realized as we were talking about the movie, we started to like it more and more. Then I go, and it'll be interesting because Cillian Murphy is in the next one, which will be interesting. Because in my brain, for 15 minutes after the movie, I went, oh, that's exciting. They'll have a big star in the third movie. It wasn't until I had paid for my ginger and was walking back to the car, then I went, oh, that's Jim from the first movie. I missed it for 15 minutes. I felt like such a moron. Then I'm like, oh, buddy, buddy, you haven't seen 28 Days Later. I get it now. I did not immediately make the connection. I feel like it's the so-me thing to do. It was amazing.

That's incredible. I feel less bad that I watched a whole Vincent Price movie without realizing who Vincent Price was with our... What is that? Tales of Terror. Yeah. I feel a little bad hearing that story. I feel less bad hearing that story.

So yes, that's my funny story.

All right. So, hey, John, let's go ahead and wrap this up. Do you have any final crucial things you want to convey about this movie to our listeners? Otherwise, I want to end with our traditional three closing questions.

Yeah, absolutely. So I will say this, that what DaCosta did here and Alex Garland did with the screenplay is what Great Horror does, which is it makes you really uncomfortable, and it breaks you open. So you're emotionally open to, you're more emotionally vulnerable, and just like we said about We Bury the Dead, and then they bring it in with a message of comradeship and survivorship and joy and friendship. Yes. And that makes it hit so much harder. The stamps and stuff could have been really cheesy if we weren't so vulnerable from the Jimmy Crystal stuff. So that's why I think that it works so well.

Very well put, John. Okay. With that said, let's close with our traditional three finishing questions. John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple?

Absolutely not.

I'm old.

The one guy who gets killed in the fortified farm is the guy who's like 50. I'm like, yep, there I am. The two young people sprint away and survive. I'm like, that's me right there. I'm surprised he made it this far.

Yeah, there is no possible way we make it more than minutes. All right, John, is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

I'm going to say it's a zombie movie because it's about a zombie. It's about Samson. It's definitely a zombie movie.

This is, I think, maybe I'll be proven wrong in the decades of our podcast to come, but I think this is one of very few films that centers a zombie as a protagonist, as an almost viewpoint perspective character.

Yeah. I'm curious about, well, there's a TV show, I Zombie, which we're not going to cover because it's TV. But there was a movie, and I can't recall the name. I think it might have been Megan. I won't say it and I won't stop to look it up. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays somebody predicting his infected daughter. And I had said earlier on in the podcast, I was really looking forward to that movie because it offered this kind of perspective that seemed really unique. So yeah.

Yep. Anyway, the zombie stuff is central to this movie.

Absolutely.

Even though the traditional zombie stuff is by this point relegated mostly to the side.

I feel like they threw most of that in just to correct plot points or just to make sure everybody knew they were still in a zombie movie.

Right. Exactly like that. We've gone 25 minutes and we haven't had a zombie horde.

Everybody seems very calm and not worried about the infected. Jimmy's seven fingers are just absolute bad asses who are unafraid of the infected. The fortified farm has developed strategies and Dr. Kelson, he's got his morphine to save him and his plans. So everybody has accepted that the infected are a thing.

I know this is dumb and nippy, but I just got to say, with all the blood flying around, it's very, I mean, remember the first movie establishes that it takes one drop of blood in your eyeball to turn completely into a zombie. I'm just saying, I wondered about that at points of the movie. There's a lot of blood flying around here.

Yeah, I think, I feel like, well, maybe that's how Jimmy lost some of his fingers in the past.

There you go, okay. And then lastly, John, do you recommend this movie first to just people generally as a movie that's worth adding to your list of films to watch this year? And secondly, do you recommend it as a zombie film to our zombie loving listeners?

So I'm going to say yes to For Everybody with a Caveat. It is a really rough movie, and if you do not like horror movies and can't do gore, then I can't recommend it to you. But I found it an incredibly powerful film. So if you can handle those things, even if you're not a zombie person, I recommend it. Second, as a zombie film fan, absolutely. Like you have no reason not to see this movie.

Yeah, I'd agree. I don't, yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot to add to that. You do, you truly do have to like pretty rough horror movies or you'd be able to handle them to enjoy this.

It's rougher than the first one, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, if you want to dip your toes into this, you know, the first one is a very fine movie. Yes. And it lacks some of the intensity of the horror.

Though it does have some of the gross stuff, but most of it involves the infected. There's like that infected hanging upside down and stuff. Like there's some pretty gnarly stuff.

It's breed at R for a reason, like for sure. But it's a little less like-

The human on human violence pushes this to another level of upsetting.

Yes, for sure. But you know, with that caveat in mind, definite recommendation on both counts. So, all right, John, anything left to do here or can we sign off?

No, join us next week where we're going to watch a Batman and Robin serial from the 1940s. And Andy, this is also a reminder for you, this is three hours of serial, so we can't wait till Friday night to watch it. So, let's get started so we can share it with the folks next time. And thank you for listening. And please give us a five-star rating on your podcast app of choice. It really does help. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.