Warning: spoilers ahead for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
28 Years Later shocked fans across the world when it ended with a clear but bonkers setup for the sequel: main character Spike being recruited by a cartwheeling band of Jimmy Savile-dressed lunatics.
And the sequel film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, lives up to this promise, showing us the bizarre cult built around Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, played by Jack O’Connell, and his followers, whom he calls his ‘fingers’.
O’Connell’s Crystal runs a brutal Satanist cult in which all its members, including Alfie Williams’ Spike, are forced to dress up as notorious paedophile Jimmy Savile in by far the most obvious reference to the late media personality.
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Whilst UK viewers will have picked up on several references to Savile, there are many nods to him that US fans would be unaware of, and some hidden ones that even British fans will have missed.
Savile's catchphrase takes on a new meaning in The Bone Temple
One of Savile’s most common catchphrases was ‘How's about that then’, becoming synonymous with him to the extent that it was the name of his 2012 biography.
In the film, Crystal will regularly ask ‘how’s that’, or ‘howzat’ and insist on his followers responding in kind, a sick and twisted reference to Savile demonstrating his control over his ‘fingers’.
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Though his dressing as Savile is, of course, a nod to his horrific past of abusing children, O’Connell has pointed out that Sir Jimmy Crystal would not be aware of that, saying in an interview with Polygon: “The zeitgeist just paused in 2001 when this infection ravaged society.
"So it's clinging onto that, and Jimmy doesn't know what we know.”
Fans online spotted a direct reference to Savile in the very first scene
The very first scene in a swimming pool sees Spike fighting another Jimmy to the death for a spot in their cult, with Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal watching them from above, sitting in a throne-like seat.
One fan posted to X with a screengrab of this scene, saying: “Amazing catch from someone on the Facebook group,” and showing three different pictures of Savile sitting in a similar type of chair.
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O’Connell has also directly addressed the characters dressing like Savile, saying Crystal ‘models himself on the memory of this figure that was always on TV’.
Whilst allegations were made against Savile whilst he was alive, they were not as widely known, with hundreds coming forward after his death in 2011 to detail the horrific sexual abuse he'd carried out over the course of six decades.
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‘Charity’ is also a twisted reference to the crimes of Savile
The cult is clearly pretty f**ked up from the first scene of the film, but the depths of their depravity become clear when they break into a commune of survivors, and Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal insists on ‘charity’ to dedicate to his father, Saint Nick (aka Satan), who he claims talks to him.
This ends up being him brutally torturing the survivors and ‘taking off their shirts’, which translates into cutting their skin off the top half of their body and skinning them whilst they are still alive.
A major factor in Savile's ability to hide his crimes was his charity work, for which he received a Knighthood whilst still alive.
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As well as being protected by the fame that followed, he also used this charity work to gain access to vulnerable people whom he abused, creating clear parallels with Spike being a vulnerable person who Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal takes advantage of in the film after the death of his mother in 28 Years Later.
Speaking about the references to Savile through the character of Crystal, O’Connell went on to tell The Hollywood Reporter: “I think what [writer Alex Garland] means behind that, and I can’t speak for him, but my take was unchecked power. I think it totally exists in the story to unsettle.”
On that count, it definitely worked if you ask me.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is now available to watch in cinemas.
Topics: 28 Years Later, Jimmy Savile, Horror, TV and Film, Film
Michael Slavin