28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Few film endings have ever been as puzzling and discordant as that of last year’s lapsed sequel 28 Years Later. Up until that closing tag, Danny Boyle’s return to a horror universe he explored more than twenty years earlier had been fresh and fulfilling. Then, just as it wrapped up, there were knife-wielding blondes in track suits ready to pounce upon our tragic young protagonist. That sharp turn was like a mid-credits Marvel teaser moved into the main body or the kind of gimmicky cliffhanger that a network television show might resort to in an effort to keep viewers hooked. It was somewhat expected if you keep up with industry news and knew coming in that 28 Years was not only the third entry to the franchise but also the first chapter of a proposed trilogy Sony envisioned for revival. Even then, it was still absolutely jarring.

The teased second chapter arrives tonight with greater creative and commercial anticipation than your traditional January genre dump. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple keeps Alex Garland, writer of 28 Years and the original 28 Days Later, as lone scribe. Boyle stays on as producer but has passed the directing baton to Nia DaCosta (The Marvels, 2021’s Candyman), who began filming this just two weeks after Boyle had wrapped the previous film in the summer of 2024.

The tonal shift foretold by that ending proves to be far less extreme, which makes sense given the common personnel and back-to-back productions. DaCosta’s sequel definitely has its own distinct feel and elements that will prevent you from ever confusing it with Boyle’s previous installment or the two from the Noughties. But it follows established narrative threads and prominently features three characters introduced in Boyle’s threequel: pragmatic, iodine-covered doctor Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), traumatized young Spike (Alfie Williams), and the large, feral infected Alpha known as Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry).

We open with Spike, having only narrowly escaped a violent end by bloodthirsty infectees, being put to the test by those sadistic, tracksuited blondes, who are all named Jimmy. Their leader is Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), who wears a ring on every finger and an inverted cross around his neck. A vicar’s son who as a child became the only member of his family to survive the apocalyptic outbreak, Jimmy has a legion of unquestioning supporters to carry out his orders for “charity”, which is nothing less than twisted acts of torture. In order to be accepted into this cult, Spike has to kill one of the existing Jimmys, which he does to everyone’s surprise, including ours.

While the 28 franchise has never flinched when it comes to violence, this one ups the ante and pushes the envelope by making uninfected humans the purveyor of unconscionable deeds. Though he takes the blonde wig thrown to him and begins answering to the name Jimmy, the good-hearted Spike shares the viewer’s obvious concerns on this front, leaving the film to explore how it might extricate the lad from this sick clique of satanists who saved his life.

Meanwhile, a more lighthearted plot finds Ian comfortable in his routines, which includes cleaning human bones for his eponymous bone temple, cranking up a generator to rock out to Duran Duran, and regularly braving death to sedate that towering, never shy infected manbeast he named Samson. Ian and Samson form a most unlikely friendship as Samson comes to visit each night and is administered a potent mix of morphine and other substances that put him into a calm, compliant daze. Taken out of context, the Ian/Samson scenes might seem like something out of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, but Garland and DaCosta put in the work to get us to somewhat suspend disbelief. Their journey into the psychological aspects of the Rage virus and the possibility of treating it might be a bridge too far for some viewers, though their attention to mental health seems well-intentioned at least.

The two narratives come together in an outrageous and spectacular fashion, giving us another sequence you would not believe if I described it to you in detail. Suffice it to say, it involves Iron Maiden and 1,000% more pageantry than this franchise has ever featured. I’m actually impressed that a movie this brutal, bloody, and dark in a franchise this brutal, bloody, and dark somehow manages to venture into a realm of comedy without viewers absolutely turning on it. Maybe they will, but the reaction at my screening and in early online reviews seems overwhelmingly favorable. I do not fully share the enthusiasm. Bone Temple deserves much more credit for being bold and different than it does for being good. But, hey, you take what you can get from a January horror movie aimed at adults and wielding a medium-sized budget.

I would say this franchise is doing the opposite of what fans long charged the Star Trek movies with. When it comes to 28, the odd-numbered installments are better than the even ones. If the installments were numbered in a usual way, that is; I am fully aware that the franchise’s titles mean that all the movies carry even numbers in them. In any event, the gaps between the highs and lows are minor, and the franchise has to date avoided the glaring creative downturns that virtually all enduring franchises eventually experience.

It sounds like, after some uncertainty and pleas for support, Sony will move forward with the third installment of the revival trilogy, with Garland writing, Boyle directing, and Academy Award winner and 28 Days Later lead Cillian Murphy starring, a lineup that is appealing enough to, sight unseen, push the next movie high on a list of anticipated films of 2027 or 2028.