28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ( 2026 | United Kingdom | 109 minutes | Nia DaCosta)

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple may reside in the same universe as last year’s 28 Years Later, but the former’s a more contained and less contemplative second installment to the planned trilogy. The approach yields its own rewards and liabilities, amping up the tension and unease, but forfeiting the powerful emotional pull that made the previous 28 Years Later feel genuinely special. Happily, the entertainment value in this second chapter remains reassuringly high.

This follow-up picks up almost precisely where the first left off, and if you think (as I did) that things would get jauntier given its predecessor’s rather comic conclusion/setup for the next one, you’d be wrong. 

The Bone Temple zooms in from the overarching journey of young protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) to focus on the boy’s misadventures with The Jimmies, the roving gang of survivors who rescued him at 28 Years Later’s finale. Clad in matching hip-hop track suits, gold chains, and blond wigs, The Jimmies forcibly assimilate Spike into their ranks. Their leader, the charismatic but creepy Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), turns out to be one awful piece of work—and he holds no qualms about delegating unmitigated brutality on anyone who crosses him.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), Spike’s surrogate father figure from the first movie,  hits a breakthrough with his scientific studies on Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the imposing Alpha amongst the infected swarming the mainland.

The trajectories of The Jimmies and Kelson eventually intersect, with a denouement that’s awash with fire, violence, copious gore, and some on-point needle drops from Duran Duran and Iron Maiden.

Last year’s 28 Years Later established this pocket universe, and its characters, so well that this sequel can’t help but pale a little (please see my belated 2025 Favorites List, as well as my more extensive take on the movie). Alfie Williams’ Spike, so wonderfully realized in the first film, is essentially reduced here to cowering from his unwanted tribe/abductors when he’s not attempting escape.

And despite being only three minutes shorter than its predecessor, The Bone Temple feels considerably less substantial, devoting less screen time to characterization in favor of action and horror setpieces.  

Fortunately, The Bone Temple still delivers solidly on its own terms. Director Nia DaCosta takes over the directorial reins from Danny Boyle with assurance, and she imbues this movie with a more breathless pace than the first installment. The thrills and brutality fly fast and furious, with skin-flaying, immolation, throat-gouging, and head-banging (the musical kind) adding to the expected stab wounds, flesh-munching, and spine-ripping manual decapitations.

The deemphasizing of Spike in this narrative generates one upside: It shifts Dr. Belson and Jimmy Crystal to the center of The Bone Temple. And it’s hard to contemplate a better pair of actors representing those opposing archetypes.

Fiennes gets far more screen time here, and he ups Belson’s eccentricity without losing the character’s hermit-mentor sweetness. But a good genre flick stands or falls on the strength of its antagonist, and O’Connell’s Jimmy Crystal provides a bracing punch to the viewer’s chops. Comedically ignorant, magnetic, cunning, and lethally determined, he represents one of the most unique (and compulsively watchable) heavies to stir up onscreen shit in a good while.

And if DaCosta and returning screenwriter Alex Garland put character nuance on the backburner for this installment, they offset it with a streak of thinly-veiled but potent socio-political fire. DaCosta’s very good 2021 reboot of Candyman demonstrated her readiness to go to such heady places without scrimping on the entertainment value, and The Bone Temple follows suit.

Jimmy’s a loathsome but incredibly commanding and charismatic figure whose blustering and charm obscure his own stupidity, even as they enable him to goad a small, undiscerning band of acolytes into following his horrific agenda with cultish fervor. Substitute track suits, chains, and blonde wigs for America First t-shirts, pickup trucks, and red baseball caps, and you have a reliably entertaining genre movie that manages to sneak in a legit message between the spine-rippings, eye-gougings, scares, and pulp adventure.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple opens in theaters everywhere January 16. Lead Image courtesy of Sony Pictures