Dr. Ian Kelson conducts mysterious experiments and young hunter Spike falls in with a gang of psychopaths in the latest entry of the 28 Days Later franchise.
28 Years Later was one of 2025’s best films for director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s ingenious ability to tell a heartrending story in the zombie horror subgenre about a young boy learning to love, die and exist by maintaining a balance of masculine thirst for destruction with feminine compassion. Nia DaCosta takes the filmmaking reins from Boyle for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and puts the words from Garland’s follow-up screenplay onto cinema in both beautiful and petrifying fashion with thoughtful direction that injects feelings of hope for our current world and society, great lead performances, and smart writing that further subverts zombie horror for the better, while continuing to propel this franchise to new heights.
The Bone Temple takes place moments after the previous film’s ending, where cult leader Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) forces our pre-teen protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) into trial by combat against one of his six rug-and-tracksuit wearing disciples, all of whom are labeled with a variant of his own name: Jimmima (Emma Laird), Jimmy Jimmy (Robert Rhodes), Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), Jimmy Fox (Sam Locke), Jimmy Jones (Maura Bird), and Jimmy Snake (Ghazi Al Ruffai).
One fight later, Spike is initiated into Jimmy’s troupe with a blonde wig and the name Jimmy, and bears witness to their barbaric approaches to torturing people while searching for a mythical figure to which Jimmy Crystal refers as ‘Old Nick.’ Meanwhile, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) remains at The Bone Temple conducting experiments with an Alpha breed zombie as his test subject, who the good doctor has dubbed Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). All goes surprisingly well, but it’s only a matter of time before Jimmy and his merry band of psychos discover Dr. Kelson’s camp on suspicion that he is the Old Nick deity for which they are looking.
The Bone Temple pivots off the moving spectacle that the initial 28 Years Later was, smartly by going in the opposite direction while still subverting its subgenre. Those who yearned for more scares in this movie’s predecessor will get them here, albeit more so from the demented sect in which Spike has found himself. The kills Jimmy and company inflict on their innocent victims are viscerally terrifying, from their gory methods and Emma Laird’s incendiary ability to conjure knives from every pocket of her tracksuit, to their mostly mutual use of lore from Teletubbies of all things, presenting Jimmy Crystal as an unhinged manchild who saw his parents violently die at the start of the Rage Virus’ spread and was left with no one to help him cope as he grew up.
As this menace, Jack O’Connell puts in a performance sure to hit nerves by his incredible screen presence; not only through a visage made ghoulish with rotted teeth and hairpiece reminiscent of the deceased real life criminal Jimmy Saville, but also through his candor of speaking, whether it’s telling yarns of Old Nick like he’s something from a children’s book, or having casual conversation with an outsider and nonchalantly warning he’ll disembowel them if he hears them lie. And Ralph Fiennes is the perfect counter to Jimmy, lending Dr. Kelson the same grace he gave the character in the first 28 Years Later, while also talking to Samson not expecting a response from the behemoth but longing for one all the same, wearing an inner loneliness and hope in personal instances.
Garland writes The Bone Temple as an exploration of prescient themes like hivemind mentality and confronting its dangerous ignorance, while Nia DaCosta directs it by putting the humanity of its characters front and center with a grounded, atmospheric tone that immerses us in the moment right next to Dr. Kelson as he tests his concoctions, silently asking us to keep in mind the meaning behind the Memento Mori skull tower. DaCosta even evolves this franchise’s visual style via clean refinement that occasionally nods to the handheld camerawork of its older entries with creative camera rigs and editing that forewarns of an incoming infected horde.
And not only is the sound design fascinating as each member of Jimmy’s clan surrounds moviegoers and Spike in the early goings by talking from a different speaker, but composer Hildur Guðnadóttir takes the baton that Young Fathers had previously and adds her monstrous musical styling with an electric guitar reminiscent of post-rock, sound effects organic to the location and even experimental saxophone, all of which add a nightmarish element to Spike’s predicament, as if danger is waiting to strike just outside the frame.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has a lot of great going for it, but the preceding film felt more like a complete movie, if only because Spike has been relegated to an observant fish out of water in this follow-up, rendering a compelling emotional arc for him absent. It’s also worth noting that a friend Spike makes along the way privately questions Sir Lord Jimmy’s beliefs in Old Nick on top of his leadership, but the movie doesn’t explore her character’s backstory enough for any reasons for her resistance to be entirely clear.
There are also a couple turns for the bizarre, such as the sporadic needle drops in an otherwise well-curated soundtrack and a set piece toward the end that’s best left undescribed, but rest assured, they all make sense in the context of this stellar sequel, a rare one that lives up to the original film. Audiences that can handle gore will cringe in disgust at the instinctive brutality of all its kills, marvel at how brilliantly DaCosta threads the needle between grounded horror and thoughtful rumination on what makes us human, and reach the wavelength of Dr. Kelson as he confronts new adversaries and treads lightly in his pursuit for a scientific miracle.
Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Nia DaCosta are on the verge of sticking the landing with this tremendous trilogy. Together in this second chapter, they present hopeful messages about today’s society, while also continuing to invent fresh ways of storytelling within this series and the horror genre at large, and that’s why 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the first great movie of 2026.