Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) spends a lot of time alone. Coated in iodine to stave off the zombie virus that has laid waste to England for three decades, he sometimes dances alone in his ossuary — a bone temple — to the music of his youth, Duran Duran. He gazes at old photos listening to “Girls on Film,” the lyric, “and she wonders how she ever got here as she goes under again,” rattling around his shaved skull.

But Dr. Kelson won’t cry for yesterday, as he tries to survive this now ordinary world, isolated and primitive, where zombies roam the countryside, and pockets of human survivors quietly scavenge. Directed by Nia DaCosta, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” starts right where 2025’s “28 Years Later,” directed by Danny Boyle, left off. Boyle and writer Alex Garland originated the franchise in 2002 with “28 Days Later,” kick-starting the 2000s zombie craze. Garland is penning the scripts for the “28 Years” sequels, a planned trilogy.

In “The Bone Temple,” it’s not the zombies one has to worry about — it’s the Jimmies. Our young hero Spike (Alfie Williams), having abandoned the secluded safety of his island home in the wake of his mother’s death, finds himself at the mercy of this merry band of bloodthirsty pranksters, shepherded by a sadistic Manson-esque leader, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell).

Clad in ratty platinum blond wigs and colorful tracksuits, the cult apes the look of the late English television personality and notorious sexual predator Jimmy Savile. Sir Jimmy is obsessed with the television of his childhood, before his reality was ripped limb from limb. Raised in chaos and bloodshed, receiving directives from a satanic voice in his head dubbed “Old Nick,” Sir Jimmy and his bewildered teenage followers, the Fingers, leave a bloody path in their wake, handing out “charity,” as they call it, randomly torturing the few humans who are unlucky enough to encounter their swaggering and silly nihilism.

Spike is a quivering young boy, but he’s good with a blade and has strong survival instincts. Joining the Fingers is his way of continuing to survive for one more day. Roaming the same patch of northern England, they’re on a collision course with Dr. Kelson, who spends his days hanging out with a heavily drugged alpha zombie, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry, who delivers a beautifully unexpected performance), hoping to find a way to bring him back to life.

In this second installment, DaCosta has the challenging task of continuing a story with established characters, and then leaving us with new ones, and more story to be told. What’s remarkable is her ability to keep the thread of tension pulled taut, even as we jump between characters and locations, and as she offsets savagery and noise with stillness and quiet. The film is shockingly violent and bloody, but there are also profoundly poetic moments and images that pop up like wildflowers in a field.

She does have some dazzling material to work with — the strange beauty of the bone temple, where the strikingly orange Kelson tends to the doped up Samson, and the distinctive style of the Jimmies, with their “Children of the Corn” hair, gold chains, tiaras and fairy wings. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt brings his own visual language to the film too. While Boyle’s iPhone camera rigs zipped and zoomed around the landscape with an almost game-like mobility, Bobbitt’s camera shakes with zombie rage and then stills, lulling us in and out of violence and peace.

In “The Bone Temple,” Garland juxtaposes faith and reason and how they oppose one another in a world where the foundations and “order” have been torn asunder. Believing in something bigger than ourselves can feel comforting even if it’s false, because humans contain all the beauty, grace and violence that can be imagined. Religion is mere theater — or at least a really great rock show.

“The Bone Temple” is a deeply wistful film, imbued with nostalgia and highly specific British cultural memory: Teletubbies, Duran Duran, Iron Maiden, Radiohead, Jimmy Savile, Winston Churchill. There’s a sweetness to the comfort of childhood touchstones and shared history in a world gone psychotic with death and destruction. These small reminders of our humanity are adjacent to Kelson’s practice of honoring the dead as a way to honor life.

Despite longing for the past, Garland knows we cannot go back to the way things were. All we can do is remember — or “never forget,” as some have famously said. Reality is bleak, shredded by violence and disinformation, but Garland does allow for a glimmer of hope. If zombie-ism is mass psychosis, an infectious disease passed from person to person, maybe there’s a way to treat it, a way to wake up from the fog. It’s a nice idea, especially in this profoundly un-ordinary world.

’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gore, graphic nudity, language throughout, and brief drug use)

Running time: 1:49

How to watch: In theaters on Friday, Jan. 16

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By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide the constitutionality of broad search warrants that collect the location history of cellphone users to find people near crime scenes.

The case involves what is a known as a “geofence warrant” that was served on Google in a police hunt for a bank robber in suburban Richmond, Virginia. Geofence warrants, an increasingly popular investigative tool, seek location data on every person within a specific location over a certain period of time.

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Police used the information to arrest Okello Chatrie in the 2019 robbery of the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian. Chatrie eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison.

Chatrie’s lawyers challenged the warrant as a violation of his privacy because it allowed authorities to gather the location history of people near the bank without having any evidence they had anything to do with the robbery. Prosecutors argued that Chatrie had no expectation of privacy because he voluntarily opted into Google’s Location History.

A federal judge agreed that the search violated Chatrie’s rights, but still allowed the evidence to be used because the officer who applied for the warrant reasonably believed he was acting properly.

The federal appeals court in Richmond upheld the conviction in a fractured ruling. In a separate case, the federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches.

The case is expected to be argued later this year, either in the spring or in October, at the start of the court’s next term.

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her has appointed Jennifer O’Rourke as the city’s new chief lobbyist and director of intergovernmental relations.

O’Rourke previously held key staff roles for Ramsey County, Gov. Mark Dayton, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, the state Senate, the Metropolitan Council and the League of Minnesota Cities.

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She has been the director of Ramsey County Intergovernmental Relations since October 2018. She was chief of staff to Rybak from 2012 to 2014, and deputy chief of staff to Dayton from 2014 to 2015 before spending three years as director of intergovernmental relations for the Met Council, the metro’s regional planning agency.

O’Rourke is married to Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee.

In a written statement, the mayor’s office described her as an “analytical thinker” who will bring “strong relations and a firm commitment to collaboration to help the city accomplish our critical legislative agenda at the State Capitol.”

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday said he would like to keep his top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, at the White House rather than potentially nominate him to replace Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve.

“I actually want to keep you where you are, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at a White House event, when he saw Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, in the audience. ”I just want to thank you, you were fantastic on television the other day.”

Trump’s comments, while not clearly definitive, have upended expectations around the extensive search the White House has undergone to find a new Fed chair, one of the most powerful financial positions in the world. The president’s remarks have boosted the prospects for Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor and already a top contender for the position.

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Hassett has generally been seen as the front-runner in the race to replace Powell because he has worked for Trump since his first presidential term. Last month, Trump referred to Hassett as a “potential Fed chair.”

Powell’s term as chair will end May 15, though he could take the unusual step of remaining on the board as governor afterward. Trump appointed Powell in 2018 but soon soured on him for raising the Fed’s key interest rate that year.

Warsh’s candidacy has also likely been boosted by the Justice Department’s subpoenas of the Federal Reserve last week, revealed Sunday in an unusually direct video statement by Powell. The Fed chair charged that the subpoenas were essentially punishment for the central bank’s refusal to lower interest rates as sharply as Trump would like.

The criminal investigation — a first for a sitting Fed chair — sparked pushback on Capitol Hill, with many Republican senators dismissing the idea that Powell could have committed a crime. The subpoenas related to testimony Powell gave last June before the Senate Banking Committee that touched on a $2.5 billion building renovation project.

The backlash has intensified concerns in the Senate, analysts say, that the Trump administration is seeking to undermine the Fed’s independence from day-to-day politics. That, in turn, may reduce Hassett’s prospects.

The brouhaha over the subpoenas is “making it harder to confirm Hassett, who is distinctively close to the president,” Krishna Guha, an analyst at investment bank Evercore ISI, wrote in a client note. “Warsh is trusted by Senate Republicans and would be much easier to confirm.”

Yet Warsh, historically, is known as a “hawk,” or someone who traditionally supports higher interest rates to ward off inflation, as opposed to a “dove,” or someone who prefers lower borrowing costs to spur hiring and growth.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose Friday, to just above 4.2%, from about 4.17% Thursday. The increase likely reflected a sense that Warsh’s chances had improved, and as a result the Fed would be less likely over time to cut rates than under a Hassett chairmanship.