Movies & TV 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is Wild, Brutal, and a Perfect Middle Child in the Trilogy And might just feature the best performance of Ralph Fiennes’ career? By Leah Schnelbach | Published on January 16, 2026 Credit: Sony Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Sony Pictures I wasn’t expecting the new 28 Days Later trilogy to become one of my favorite things in 2025 and 2026, but here we are. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a tense, brutal, fantastic follow-up to last year’s 28 Years Later. Director Nia DaCosta and screenwriter Alex Garland add to that film’s worldbuilding, deepen a couple of characters we already know, and tee up a third film in a way that left me satisfied with the story so far, and extremely excited for what’s coming next. In order to talk about this movie I’ll need to spoil a few things from the last movie, as it picks up immediately after the previous one ends, so if you still need to see 28 Years Later, and want to, maybe skip this review until after you’ve watched it. For now, I’ll just say that both films are emotionally gripping works of post-apocalyptic worldbuilding—but also that The Bone Temple is often brutal and truly horrific in a way that 28 Years Later was not. We pick back up with 28 Years Later’s young lead, Spike (Alfie Williams), as he’s undergoing an initiation ceremony with the Jimmys—the unhinged Teletubbies-meets-Power Rangers parkour cult we met in the last two minutes of 28 Years Later. From there we follow the Jimmys as they rampage across what used to be England. In lighter moment, we check back in with Ralph Fiennes’ Dr. Kelson, still tending his cathedral-sized memento mori, the Bone Temple, and now actively working to forge a relationship with the “alpha” Infected whom he dubbed Samson. Credit: Sony Pictures What can I say without spoiling anything? You know how the previous film was dotted with moments of surprising warmth, kindness, and empathy, that were almost shocking given the post-apocalyptic genre of the film? Wellllll, this movie… isn’t like that. At least not as often. The Jimmys are a Satanic cult that doesn’t see much value in empathy, and The Bone Temple becomes a story of how to survive the Jimmys as much as anything else. But I will say that the moments of humanity, when they come, glow all the brighter for being in a harsher story. The cast are all amazing. This thing only works if everyone commits, and boy do they. Alfie Williams continues to be an incredibly impressive newer actor in a role that basically requires him to radiate terror and grief unceasingly for two hours. Ralph Fiennes has one extraordinary, showy scene that might be the coolest thing he’s ever done—I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But he also, always, finds Dr. Kelson’s humanity, the moral core he’s held onto despite everything, and that core is backbone of the movie. But also also, that one scene, by itself, justifies the cost of a ticket to the theater with the best sound design in your area, and I really really need people to go see it so I can yell about it. Samson was treated as the final boss of the Infected in the previous film, and of course became the star of a lot of “28 inches later” jokes due to his prosthetic bodysuit that Chi Lewis-Parry wears as the character. But here Samson also becomes a real person—a human being, not a joke or a monster—and watching Lewis-Parry bring more and more of Samson’s personality into his face is a gorgeous experience. (It also throws an interesting light back across the whole series, if all of the Infected have been people the entire time.) Finally, I kind of want to found a church so I can hang Jack O’Connell’s picture in it? Between his take on Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal and his work as Remmick he’s rapidly becoming my favorite actor. He veers between terrifying and hilarious as naturally as breathing, and it’s easy to understand why people are entranced by him, and follow him no matter how violent his demands are. He could have easily been a cartoon villain, but, as with his turn in Sinners, you always know there’s a person under all the theatricality. Credit: Sony Pictures As I mentioned, The Bone Temple is often a brutal watch—but there is a point to it. Rather than focusing on the Infected as the main antagonist, Nia DaCosta and Alex Garland make it clear that the Jimmys are the biggest danger people face now. Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal and his followers rampage across the land, casually taking out Infected as they go, but also targeting regular people for torture and murder. These acts are framed as “charity” by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal—because he claims to be working the will of his dad, Old Nick, on a world that was abandoned by God and plagued with demons. But does he actually believe that? Or is he just a savvy cult leader spreading fear to hold onto power? Obviously that question doesn’t mean a whole lot if you’re the one hanging upside-down in a barn, but for those of us watching the movie from a safe distance, it’s the heart of the film. What the 28 Days/Years movies are really about is how people respond to catastrophe. Do you respond by building a new kind of community, by seeking power, by giving into your basest instincts, by playing on the fear of weaker people? I was pleasantly surprised to see how much this post-apocalyptic horror film became a conversation about faith, science, reason, zealotry—Wake Up Infected Man?—because it takes its world so seriously, and really grapples with what sorts of beliefs and communities would spring up among the surviors of the Rage Virus. Like a lot of other films that have come out recently (Wake Up Dead Man, Marty Supreme, The Running Man, HIM, One Battle After Another, The Long Walk, The Secret Agent, Superman, even The Phoenician Scheme, kind of) The Bone Temple is about toxic leaders and cults of personality, and the lengths people will go to submit their own wills to a powerful person. We don’t see how Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal fought his way to the top, but we see how he stays there, and it’s the classic tactic of creating an in-group, making that in-group fight all outsiders, and constantly threatening members of the in-group with being cast out—although in the world of the Jimmys, “being cast out” means fighting a new potential Jimmy to the death. Why don’t the newer Jimmys rise up? Because they believe that Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal really is the son of the Devil, and he gives them no reason to doubt that. Or course, the fact that his followers are all quite young, and have only known this brutal, terrifying world, goes a long way toward explaining their complicity. Credit: Sony Pictures While The Bone Temple is much more insular in its worldbuilding than 28 Years Later, we do get to see an alternative Britain that’s completely cut off from the outside world, but because we’re following two characters with real power and agency this time, we’re able to see how that plays out. The Jimmys all follow Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal’s lead, and he was about 8 when the Rage Virus killed everyone he loved, seemingly in the early 2000s. So he and his cultists dance like Teletubbies, fight like Power Rangers, and dress like Jimmy Savile, the popular British DJ and television host—who turned out to be a worse monster than any of the Infected. (What they reminded me of most were Alex and his Droogs from A Clockwork Orange, but presumably none of the Jimmys got to see that before they lost electricity forever.) Meanwhile when we see more of Dr. Kelson’s life, he’s singing Duran Duran and Radiohead to himself while he pores over medical texts that are at least 30 years out of date, because that was the music of his 20s and 30s, before the world ended. One of my favorite films of recent years is Tim Mielants’ and Enda Walsh’s adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. I mention it not just because Cillian Murphy is a producer and actor in both that film and the 28 Days/Years series, but because that film turns on the story of a man living an impossibility: he witnesses a situation that he knows is wrong, everything in him tells him it’s wrong, but his entire life is built upon ignoring that wrong. What does he do? Does he risk his entire life to try to right the wrong? Or does he duck his head, turn his eyes away, provide for his family, remain an upstanding member of his community? The reason I love the film is that it never pretends the choice is easy. I’m thinking of it now because, as weird as it might seem, The Bone Temple is also about that. There are a few moments when characters are faced with terrible choices, and those choices change the world. What I love about 28 Years Later, and now The Bone Temple, is that both films seem to say that the collapse of society is no excuse for ducking your head and turning your eyes away.[end-mark] The post <em>28 Years Later: The Bone Temple</em> is Wild, Brutal, and a Perfect Middle Child in the Trilogy appeared first on Reactor.