Dir: Nia DaCosta, UK/US, 2026, 109 mins
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Chi Lewis-Parry
Review by Carol Allen
The story picks up from the epilogue of the last film, when young survivor Spike (Williams) was waylaid by the self-styled Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (O’Connell), and his gang of young, knife wielding thugs. Crystal is a sadistic weirdo with long blond hair and rather a lot of jewellery, who believes he is the son of Satan. All his acolytes, boys and girls, have to wear blond wigs and call themselves Jimmy after their leader. Forced by the gang to fight one of them, more by luck than judgement Spike kills his opponent and is press-ganged.
Meanwhile the weird but kindly iodine coated Dr Ian Kelson (Fiennes), who dominated the second half of the previous film, is still collecting bodies and honouring them in his bone temple. He also has a new interest – the biggest and strongest of the undead, whom he names Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). This is a guy who literally eats brains for breakfast. Kelson is fascinated by him to the extent of drugging him with morphine and noting the latent humanity starting to emerge. The sight of them getting stoned together is one to treasure
Nearby Jimmy and the Jimmies are terrorizing a family of survivors. “Are you going to leave?”, one of them naively asks. “Yes”, says Crystal. “But obviously we’re going to kill you, first”. A chilling prelude to their horrific fate. Alfie’s lack of enthusiasm for such actions does not go unnoticed but he is saved from the wrath of Lord Jimmy with the help of one of the softer members of the gang, Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman) and the fact that Lord Jimmy to is keen to meet Kelson, and Jimmy knows where the bone temple is.
And this is where things get even more interesting. The mayhem quietens for a while when the two meet, as Jimmy confides his memories from childhood, when his vicar father was infected (did we see this in the very first film?) and how that has shown him that he is the true son of Satan. Which leads the wise and wily Kelson to create a climactic ceremony to subdue this evil nutter which is carried out to the head banging soundtrack of Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast, and could quite literally blow your mind. This is a Fiennes like you’ve never seen before.
There is a rumour that yet another in the series is in the pipeline, with Danny Boyle back in the director’s chair. I’m a great admirer of Boyle but perhaps it would be better to quit when ahead. DaCosta’s film would be a great one to exit on.
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