Movie Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

If there is any one movie franchise currently running that seems hellbent on confounding audition expectations in the best way possible, it’s the zombie apocalypse saga that Danny Boyle and Alex Garland kicked off in 28 Days Later. Just this past Summer they returned to the series and surprised audiences with the emotionally resonant 28 Years Later. Mere months later, Garland is back handling the script, but this time Nia DaCosta, who proved adept at horror with her stylish and incisive Candyman reboot, is handling directing duties, and once again we’ve been gifted with something wholly unexpected.

Picking up immediately following the events of the previous movie, Spike (Alfie Williams) has been taken in by the “droog”-like gang known as the Jimmies, led by the charismatic but sadistic and possibly delusional Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). He is horrified by what he witnesses, but Spike can’t see any means of escape and so reluctantly allows himself to be dragged deeper into their chaos.

All the while, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) still resides in the so-called “Bone Temple” of the title, where his experiments at curing the Rage Virus that turns people into zombies have begun to show promising results in an Alpha Zombie he’s named Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). The Jimmies’ meandering, violent path will soon bring them into contact with Kelson and Samson, and not everyone will survive the encounter.

The zombie violence is scaled way back this time out, though it is as vicious as ever when it appears. Instead, the primary threat has shifted to uninfected people. O’Connell does a remarkable job as Jimmy Crystal, switching between comedically exaggerated British politeness and leering cruelty at the drop of a limb. Williams remains compelling as Spike, though his role is largely reduced to being afraid this time around, and Fiennes is again imminently watchable as he relishes the role of the eccentric doctor. The real surprise here though is Lewis-Parry’s Samson, whose evolution throughout the story is truly something to behold.

The first half of the film is compelling and suspenseful, as we root for Spike to find a way to escape the Jimmies, but it’s when the two storylines converge that The Bone Temple becomes something truly special. Garland is here interested in examining the dangers of zealotry and how it can be brought to bear in service of one man’s delusions of grandeur while at the expense of people who are genuinely trying to help humanity, or at minimum just survive. After a truly epic use of Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast”, the finale winds up feeling slightly abrupt, and the smattering of jump scares come off as cheap and unnecessary (though they did work), but if those nitpicks keep the film from perfection, they don’t make it less enjoyable. This is a unique, exciting, and thought-provoking take on the zombie genre, and is perhaps the first truly great film of 2026. ★★★★½