28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Is Often Scary, Sometimes Sweet, and Metal as Fuck: Review

If you found out that becoming a zombie might mean getting high with Ralph Fiennes and listening to Duran Duran, would you be that upset about it? That’s just one of the thoughts inspired by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the fourth installment of the horror franchise kicked off in 2002 by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Days Later. The new film gives director Nia DaCosta the opportunity to put her own stamp on this direct sequel to 28 Years Later, and she in turn delivers a character-focused look at life after the end of the world, rich with unsettling but often profound moments.

As the title indicates, it’s (still) been 28 years since the United Kingdom became a quarantine zone abandoned by the rest of the world, with few survivors and seemingly fewer sane ones. Yet things somehow don’t feel impossibly bleak. The marketing for the previous film (one of 2025’s best) leaned hard on eerie visuals like terrifying towers of bones and an orange-tinted Fiennes, looking unhinged. Once you saw the movie, though, the truth behind those images gave them an unexpected beauty: Those bones were actually meant as an ossuary, a memorial for those lost to the Rage virus, and Fiennes’s character was a kindly doctor doing his best in dire times.

In The Bone Temple, Dr. Ian Kelson continues tending to his memorial while entertaining himself with a hand-crank-powered record player, his vinyl collection including not just the aforementioned Duran Duran but also Radiohead and Iron Maiden. However, he also stumbles across a new hobby: getting acquainted with “Samson” (Chi Lewis-Parry), the Infected Alpha from the previous film who made an, ahem, big impression. Ian discovers that his knockout drugs have a (temporary) pacifying effect on Samson — opening up a world of possibilities for the franchise’s groundbreaking depiction of the undead.

Meanwhile, at the end of the previous film, young Spike (Alfie Williams) had become ensnared by a gang of survivors led by the Jimmy Savile-worshipping “Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal” (Jack O’Connell); The Bone Temple begins with Spike being inducted into the gang almost against his will, and thus caught in an impossible conflict between his own survival and doing the right thing. These dual narratives do eventually converge, intertwined with short bursts of zombie action to keep the audience on its toes. Yet the undead carnage is nothing compared to the sorts of horrors inflicted by the Jimmies, whose interpretation of “charity” involves some graphic depictions of flaying.

The Bone Temple once again pulls off the 28 Days Later trick of finding moments of grace at the end of the world, with enough beautiful moments to balance out the grotesque ones. For those who found 28 Years Later a little overwrought in its execution, DaCosta does a solid job of echoing Boyle’s directing choices even as she smooths out the rough edges and makes some signature moves of her own. She’s not afraid of mounting a camera to one of the Infected as they rage, but she’s sparing about those moves, instead allowing the performances and production design to shine distraction-free. In lieu of Young Fathers, Oscar winner Hildur Guðnadóttir (Consequence Composer of the Year in 2022) handles the music, amplifying the movie’s loudest and quietest moments in equal measure.

Young Alfie Williams ended up being the stealth star of 28 Years Later with a dedicated and sensitive performance. However, his role in this film is more of a supporting one; the true lead here ends up being Fiennes, who never struggles to hold the audience’s attention in his numerous solo scenes. Erin Kellyman (a familiar face from projects as wide-ranging as Eleanor the Great and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) also emerges from the cult of Jimmies as a decent soul and ally for Spike. And Jack O’Connell is never anything less than committed to his strategic derangement; there’s much method to his madness, and the intelligence glimmering behind his eyes makes him a truly terrifying villain.

The biggest flaw of The Bone Temple may be its positioning as not just a sequel, but the second part of what’s intended to be a trilogy. Because of the way the narrative flows from the first film to this one, and the way one or two plot threads are still left to be resolved by the end, it doesn’t fully work as a stand-alone feature. However, its delights are many — including one sequence at the movie’s climax, which inspired a full-out applause break from a theater full of critics.

Based on positive responses from early Bone Temple screenings, Sony is moving forward with a third installment, set to feature the return of Cillian Murphy, and DaCosta does a beautiful job of setting things up for whichever filmmaker might handle the next film. Deadline reports that “it’s hopeful” Boyle would return. If he ends up not being available, though, DaCosta’s more than proven capable of doing what this franchise excels at: Reflect humanity at its worst — and its best.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple arrives in theaters on Friday, January 16th. Check out the trailer below.