“28 Years Later” introduces Ralph Fiennes’ Dr. Ian Kelson as a man accustomed and somewhat resigned to being taken for something he isn’t. From a distance, the physician hermit looks like a lunatic living among rage-crazed monsters, painted head to toe in blood, scavenging for corpses to make pillars of their bones.
Only those who dare to get close enough to speak with him, including the film’s young protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams), find out the truth. It isn’t blood reddening Kelson’s skin, but iodine. His meticulously assembled forest of skulls, femurs, tibiae, and fibulae isn’t sacrilege; it’s a memorial. “Every skull is a set of thoughts,” he gently tells Spike. “These sockets saw, and these jaws spoke and swallowed. This is a monument to them. A temple.”
