The latest instalment in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later saga, released 14 January 2026, paints a desolate picture of humanity in post-apocalyptic Britain. Despite being shot back-to-back with 28 Years Later (2025), Nia DaCosta creates a more feverish and dreamlike atmosphere than its questlike predecessor. Although 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple features a stunning cast (Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell give incredible performances) and hits the mark several times, it relies too heavily on clichés and winks to the camera.
As a direct sequel, viewers are keen to know what becomes of “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal (O’Connor) and his gang of Jimmys, modelled after notorious paedophile Jimmy Savile. The 2025 movie set up the significance of Crystal as a cult-of-personality figure who dominates the desolate countryside. He loomed over 28 Years Later as an unseen threat—“behold Jimmy, he is coming” reads ominous graffiti on the side of a barn—and anticipation built over whether the villain would measure up.
Unsurprisingly, O’Connor delivers the characteristic charm and alarming unpredictability of a cult leader, keeping the audience constantly on their toes. His character is given dimension through mentions of his early trauma and schizophrenia, in addition to being shaped by the world he lives in. Many of the remaining humans are brutalised and anti-social.
The Jimmys represent a perversion of childhood innocence, obsessed with Teletubbies and dressing up in costumes. The titular Jimmy and his gang were children when the virus wreaked havoc and their ability to grow into functional adults has been severely stunted by society’s collapse. However, it is disappointing to see a character with a stigmatised mental illness being depicted as violent and relishing the pain of others.
This perception of schizophrenia is harmful, especially given people with the condition are 14 times more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. The revelation the “rage virus” is largely driven by psychosis reinforces this strange bent against people with psychiatric illnesses. Once treated with medication, the infected Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) becomes docile and almost human.
It’s intended as a huge reveal about the nature of the virus. Instead, it is anticlimactic and a betrayal to the source material—the rage virus was terrifying because it was impossible to explain or control. Now, Samson just needs to pick up a prescription at his local Boots to erase his “zombie” status.
DaCosta does her best with the material she has, trying to depict Samson as a normal human caught in the throes of the virus. But there is something uncomfortable about the only Black character being characterised as a savage, uncontrollable monster, who needs to be rescued by a clever white doctor. This feels deeply colonialist.
You’ve got to wonder how we got to this point when 28 Days Later (2002) had a smart and strong Black woman as a lead role. Bone Temple is the first in the series to attempt humour. There are funny moments, mostly references to normal life which are absurd in context, such as Ian Kelson (Fiennes) saying he’s a NHS doctor.
The Bone Temple fails to do anything we haven’t seen already
It provides a light contrast to the people being skinned alive. While I was thrilled to see Fiennes perform a satanist-inspired drag show to Iron Maiden, pyrotechnics included, it detracts from the serious tone of the film. It feels very “Hollywood” in a way 28 Days never did.
Speaking of, 28 Days presented an unique dystopia, destroyed by rage, which remained down-to-earth and commented on the evils which lie within humanity itself. The success of the film came from how different it was to pre-existing zombie films. In contrast, The Bone Temple fails to do anything we haven’t seen already.
Every character is a well-known trope: a boy becoming a man, a cult born from the disaster, a seemingly “crazy” but intelligent old man, a pregnant woman, and a “special” zombie. The bone temple itself is the only interesting aspect, but it served its function in 28 Years. It is nothing more than elaborate set dressing here.
Repeatedly, Bone Temple breaks the established rules of its own universe. It stamps on the original ending of 28 Days for the sake of a cheap cameo. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief—after all, we saw the infected die at the end of the first movie but they are miraculously revived in the sequels—but they’re asking me to throw away the whole rulebook at this point.
They even refer to the infected as “zombies”. Honestly, it feels like they slapped the number “28” on a generic apocalypse movie because this movie has nothing in common with the original world Boyle built.