A brutal, theologically charged sequel that outstrips its predecessor, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple pushes the franchise into darker, stranger territory — blending ghoulish violence, sharp social commentary, and standout performances into what may be the series’ finest chapter yet.
This review is relatively spoiler-free.
The movie was filmed back-to-back with 28 Years Later,which was released last July. This meant a mere six-month gap between the two films, a big bonus if, like me, and most who have seen it, you’d liked that last film, the belated third instalment in the now four-film strong ’28…’ franchise. My review of that last movie can be found here Exploring Themes in 28 Years Later: Survival and Society , but I’ll add that it was one of the few films I’ve seen in the last year that I enjoyed almost as much second time around, on a much smaller screen in the comfort of my own home.
Although there is a clear thematic and chronological through-line that links last year’s movie to 28 Day Later and 28 Weeks Later released in 2003 and 2007 respectively, franchise creator and overall supremo Danny Boyle had been keen to stress that was also 28 Years Later wasintended to be the beginning of a whole new trilogy, with the making of the intended final part dependent on the success of the first two.
With this in mind, I’d been slightly concerned that Boyle had chosen to vacate the Directors chair for this latest outing. He’d sat out 28 Weeks Later too and, though still a decent movie that expanded the universe of the franchise, few would choose it over that very first film, a film that, for good or worse, had lifted the ‘Zombie’ sub-genre of horror out of the doldrums. Without 28 Days, no Walking Dead.
Nia Dacosta was handed the Director’s chair by Boyle for Bone Temple. I was not greatly familiar with his work, though I knew he’d done some well-regarded movies, notably Hedda. But his reputation had been somewhat sullied by the almost universally panned Superhero flick The Marvels.
Too factors eased my concerns about the effect this change of Director might have on the quality of this new film. Firstly, Alex Garland remained in place as screenwriter (he, along with Boyle, had been much missed in Weeks), and secondly, the third film in this trilogy, the fifth in the franchise as a whole, had already been green-lit in December, purely on the basis of audience approval at pre-release test screenings of Bone Temple.
To get my conclusion in early, I needn’t have worried. This film is every bit as good, and probably even better than last year’s offering.
Negatives
This will be a short section. The whole film was one big positive.
For the sake of having to say something, I suppose it could be argued that while last year’s film could be enjoyed with little to no knowledge of what had come before, this is not so much the case here. The new film begins almost at the point the last left off, with the introduction of the Savill-esque Sir-Lord Jimmy Crystal and his brutal seven-strong band of cult-like followers (an ending that bewildered some but was clearly a prelude to what was to follow). You could enjoy this for its own sake. But it would surely leave you wanting to immediately check out its predecessor, and probably the two older films too, so what’s the point? 28 Years Later is now readily available on disc or to stream, and I’d highly recommend checking out at least that one before tackling this.
Some have also pointed out that the choice Sir Jimmy Saville as a role model for Son of Satan Crystal is a strange one, because it doesn’t fit with real-world continuity. In universe, the Rage Virus first ravaged Britain in 2002. Saville’s role as Britain’s most notorious celebrity sex-abuser didn’t emerge until a year after his death, in 2012. Had the world of 28, a world where such things as televisions and newspapers have become an increasingly dimly remembered relic from before (and not even that for younger characters like Alfie and Jimmy Ink), then Saville’s crimes would never have been revealed.
But that world isn’t our world, and it’s probably better not to overthink such things. The film doesn’t explain Krystal’s attachment to Saville, and nor does it need to. But we can speculate that it was perhaps for his kitsch value, which would tie-in with another (for him) fondly remembered item of light entertainment, the children’s television show, The Teletubbies. If you wanted to go deeper, then perhaps Garland, or Boyle, was referencing Arendt’s famous formulation concerning The Banality of Evil, for never was a celebrity as banal nor, as it turns out, as evil as Saville.
As for the direction, perhaps Bone Temple suffers slightly from the absence of the experimental, mixed media approach of Boyle. Dacosta’s approach is much more direct. Whereas Boyle suggested patriotic olde-English, vaguely post-Brexit yearnings and religious themes symbolically, this is all much more on the nose here. But this isn’t really a criticism. The central character, Sir-Lord Jimmy, is almost literally setting himself up as the anti-Christ, perhaps the only sort of Christ which would make sense in such a post-apocalyptic Hell-scape. There’s no getting away from the fact that this is a deeply theological movie, and the direction had to reflect that. Sometimes, symbolism isn’t enough.
Positives
That the one-hundred-ten-minute length flew by is a testament in itself to how well this was directed, and Garland is a superb writer, with a knack for producing realistic dialogue in a fantastical world.
The acting was universally superb, a relatively small cast gelling superbly as an ensemble. We must particularly cite O’Connell for his skill in making in Crystal a believable character from what was essentially a deliberate caricature of a caricature. That he proved himself the equal of the great Ralph Fiennes, here reprising and adding further depth (and humour) to the Dr Kelson character introduced last time out, is a testament to his abilities.
The youthful Spike had a much less central, though still important, role in this film than the last. Alfie Williams had nailed the character in what had been his first appearance on film in Years, and he was excellent again here. Particularly of note is the chemistry he exhibits with Erin Kellyman’s Jimmy Ink, in whom he finds an, at first, reluctant ally in his desperate bid to escape the brutal demands of the Clockwork Orange like cult in he’d unwillingly been press-ganged into.
Those who felt the last film lacked the necessary amount of blood and gore to qualify as a proper Zombie-horror movie, can rest safe in the knowledge that ghoulish violence has been notched up to Max here.
That the majority, and most graphic of this violence is unleashed not by the Infected’ (to give the Zombies of this universe their proper name) upon survivors, or even survivors upon the Infected, though we get plenty of that too, but by one group of survivors, the Jimmy Cult against other survivors, any survivors who cross their path, all under the command of Crystal, and all in the name of administering his warped version of ‘charity.’ (the choice of this word, ‘charity’, is itself a no towards Saville. Our real-world Sir Jimmy, if course, hid his decades-long rampage of abuse in plain sight behind his tireless charity work).
I’m by no means squeamish, but the scenes that followed commands such ‘Take their shirts’ were hard to watch.
I don’t want to give away too many spoilers as regards the plot, but I will briefly mention my three absolute highlights in a movie of highlights.
The first concerns the relationship between Dr. Kerson (Fiennes) and the Alpha Infected Samson. Like Kelson, Samson is a returning character from last year’s film, but here the actor Chi Lewis Parry is given much more to do, and he does it superbly, almost without speaking a word.
The relationship has shades of that between Frankenstein’s Monster and the blind fiddler in the original, 1931 Universal version of Frankenstein. In that classic, the fiddler had accepted the unfortunate creature because he had been literally unable to see that it was a monster who had entered his humble home. Here, Kelson is only too aware of what he is dealing with, that this afflicted super-strength creature will rip his head from his shoulders and devour his brain without moral restriction. Yet, he is able to see beyond the infection to the human being that once inhabited this body and, perhaps, the human mind that still remains, but has been rendered dormant by the rage-virus. Through his compassion, his willingness to try and recover this latent humanity, and with more than a little help from the opiate narcotics he brews up in his private bone temple laboratory, partly in search of a cure for the virus and partly as a means of giving himself relief from the horror that surrounds him, he is able to forge between them an unlikely friendship and alliance.
My second highlight is the scene on the long derelict train when Samson, surrounded by the dead and the similarly afflicted, finds his dormant mind does indeed, in a tantalising, brief and sporadic manner, begin to flicker into life. The resulting glimpse of the mundane but magnificent world that once was, a world of rules, of attractive ticket collectors and passengers hiding behind newspapers, is almost as shocking to us as it is to Samson, and a reminder that only a fragile veneer separates our civilisation from barbarism.
The highlight, the scene that is destined to be the scene that will be shown whenever this film, or the career of Ralph Fiennes, is a subject of online screen discussion, is the climax of the movie, the point at which the twin narratives of the rampage of the Jimmy’s and Alfie’s bid to escape it collides with that of the story of Kerson and his Temple, a macabre but magnificent monument, and perhaps the ultimate expression of Outsider Art, finally collide.
I won’t say any more about Fiennes’ ‘Old Nick’ routine, except to say that if Iron Maiden pass on the opportunity to re-release their song 666 The Number of the Beast, with this song as its accompanying video, then they are missing a superb career kick-starting opportunity.
Aside from Iron Maiden, we really must give a big shout out the musical accompaniment to the movie as a whole, both the original core by Hildur Guonadottir, and the selection of British eighties pop classics that Kelson manages to play on an old record player within his Bone Temple as another reminder, to him and to us, of the world that has been lost, are superb.
At the very end of the film, we see the brief return of a character from way back at the beginning of the franchise. The appearance of Crystal and his followers at the end of 28 Years Later gave us a strong clue as to the main narrative drive of the next movie, and I suspect the return of the central character from 28 Days Later performs the same function here.
Conclusion
Probably a Masterpiece. 10/10. If the final movie is the equal of the last two, the 28 series will have a strong claim to be the greatest horror franchise of all time.
We’ll have to wait more than six months to find out what happens next, but Garland’s script is written and production is soon to begin, so it’s unlikely the gap will be anything like the eighteen years that separated Weeks from Years.
My money is on late 2027 but, whenever it happens, I’ll be there to see it.
Reviewed by Anthony C Green
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in cinemas now.
Anthony C Green, January 2026
Picture credit: By Columbia Pictures – http://www.impawards.com/2026/twenty_eight_years_later_the_bone_temple.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80967111
Directed by Nia Dacosta
Written by Alex Garland
Produced by Danny Boyle
Key Cast:
Jack O’ Connell – Sir Jimmy Crystal, Ralph Fiennes – Dr Ian Kelson, Alfie Williams – Spike, Chi Lewis-Parry – Samson, Erin Kellyman – Jimmy Ink and Emma Laird – Jimmima.
