** This article contains spoilers for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple**
When it comes to zombie movies, the market today feels pretty oversaturated, so why should 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple be any different? If you’re asking that question, then you obviously haven’t seen any of the previous installments in this series.
In a world full of gimmicky cash grabs, 28 Years Later has something that a lot of movies today lack: the courage to experiment. It’s genre-bending and genre-defining all at the same time.
This movie delves into what it would actually be like to go through something as tragic as the end of life as you know it, and follows the very human reactions of its characters.
Of course, it displays this with the visually and morbidly fascinating introduction of the “Jimmys,” but it also includes a character that I find arguably more interesting, and that’s Doctor Kelson, played by Ralph Fiennes.
Music and its connection to humanity
Doctor Kelson has survived almost the entire apocalypse by himself. The film explores the need that his character has for connection in many ways, the most obvious being his attempts to domesticate and befriend one of the infected. He also created the bone temple to give a resting place to people who have fallen victim to the virus in one way or another.
However, the thing that relates him to the audience the most is his repeated use of music. He has a record player in his bunker that is the main source of the movie’s biggest needle drops. He’s shown singing along to the works of Duran Duran, Iron Maiden, and even Radiohead.
Multiple times while in the theater, I found myself swaying along to the rhythm of songs that had no business being in a movie as gory as this one, and I loved it.
It’s heavily implied that the thing that had been keeping Kelson sane, or at least as sane as you could be in his situation, was music. Even a small connection to his old life kept him from going off the deep end.
The best scene in the movie
If you’ve seen The Bone Temple already, then you absolutely know which scene I’m about to talk about. The one where Doctor Kelson has to convince a group of cultists that he’s Satan so that their leader won’t murder him in a particularly gruesome way.
Yes, I know how that sounds. I warned you this movie was a bit intense.
In the scene, Kelson does a lip-sync-for-his-life to the song “The Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden, and it’s awesome. The choreography and cinematography make for one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in a movie theater recently. The audience was going crazy, both the cultists in the movie and the regular people in the seats next to me.
The song choice was just perfect, I mean, if you had to prove that you were the devil, wouldn’t Iron Maiden be your top pick as well?
Adding to the creepy atmosphere
If you’ve ever heard “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead, then you know it does a good job of simultaneously hyping you up and making you feel insane. Mixing it with the other original pieces on the score throughout the movie just gives peak zombie movie vibes.
Including songs like “Rio” and “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran gives the scenes of Kelson dancing or singing a good contrast to the horrors that occur during the rest of the film. Songs like these also serve to not only give the audience a break, but also showcase the less intense side of Doctor Kelson.
However, one of the biggest emotional gut punches in the movie is when we hear some of the score from the original 28 Days Later film. This happens towards the end of the movie, when we get to see the return of Cillian Murphy’s character Jim and his daughter.
All I have to say is that Doctor Kelson and I might as well sign up for a shared Spotify account because he knows a bop when he hears one, and the songs he plays throughout the film serve to not only entertain the audience but also shed some light on the brutally lonely nature of his life in solitude.
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