“No Children Beyond This Point” says the sign in the dilapidated water park, the shabby but perfect place to start the fourth instalment of the 28 Days franchise. Directed by Nia DaCosta, who more than earned her horror spurs with the 2021 remake of Candyman, 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple certainly is the nastiest and possibly the best of the series, a return-to-roots affair that plays like a reverse angle on 28 Years Later.
It was clearly shot back-to-back with its predecessor, featuring the same sets and a few of the same actors. But the familiarity it seems to offer is deceptive; all bets are off when it comes to survival, and DaCosta makes sure everyone goes out in the grisliest way possible.
As a statement of intent, that opening scene is as lo-fi as can be, but disturbing nonetheless. Spike (Alfie Williams), the young adventurer from 28 Years, has been taken in by the Jimmys, a street gang led by the charismatic but psychotic Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). The Jimmys made a late but jaw-dropping entry in the previous film, where their controversial outfits — blond wigs, tracksuits and the kind of jingle-jangle jewelry worn by depraved British TV personality Jimmy Savile — added a surreal, left-field jolt of WTF that almost derailed the ending. This time, they are front and center, and the film’s strongest suit — praise Sir Lord! — is that DaCosta does not play their sadistic antics for laughs.
Which is where we begin: Alfie, armed with a knife, is forced to fight to the death (“No quarter!”) against one of Crystal’s “fingers.” Terrified, and with no sense of anatomy, Spike stabs his opponent in the thigh, hitting the femoral artery and causing him to bleed to death. The boy’s fate is slow and harsh, even in a world where people have their heads ripped and their brains scooped out. Worse, Spike is forced to join Crystal’s gang and take the name Jimmy, effectively joining a nihilistic death cult that, for a time, brings to mind the daddy of all nihilistic death cults, the one seen in 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
In the meantime, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is continuing his work in the field, the iodine-smothered medic hiding out in his underground man-cave with his Duran Duran and Radiohead vinyl (the lyrics to the former’s “Ordinary World” are artfully deployed). Kelson has been tracking the new “alpha” strain of mutants and is taking a watchful eye on the particularly aggressive male he calls Samson (“I named you for your size and strength … and hair”). The idea of a trainable zombie was pursued by George A. Romero in Day of the Dead with the personable Bub, but Samson becomes much more than a test subject to Kelson as they dance together in his self-built ossuary (the “bone temple” of the title), smashed out of their heads on what’s left of his personal stash of morphine.
Crystal and the doctor are on a collision course, though neither knows it yet, and screenwriter Alex Garland takes the scenic route to get there. DaCosta being a non-Brit helps enormously here; in someone else’s sights, the Jimmys might be played for laughs, given Crystal’s leering catchphrase (“’Owzat!”) and their obsession with the Teletubbies (a callback to the beginning of 28 Years). DaCosta dispenses with irony; instead, there’s a Manson Family-meets-Village of the Damned vibe to these feral kids, notably in a chilling, Straw Dogs-style siege on a remote farmhouse. Crystal refers repeatedly to acts of “charity,” famously the real Savile’s cover for the crimes he never paid for. But Crystal’s ideas of charity are cruel, violent and much stronger than anything in the franchise so far.
Indeed, anyone expecting a rote continuation of the story will be surprised by the way that it seems to take a pause, ending with a coda (and a surprise reappearance) that pretty much guarantees a third installment. Spike takes a backseat, and who knows what’s happened to his father, not to mention that whole island community? Key to this is Fiennes’ commando performance, a tour de force with so few f*cks given that the film’s astonishing, electrifying climax could put him back into the awards conversation with a part that couldn’t be farther away from Conclave’s Cardinal Thomas. O’Connell, too, confirms his villainous chops with a subtle variation on his Sinners role, playing a seductive but sick, delusional psycho who kids himself that he has the devil’s ear.
DaCosta, meanwhile — perhaps much more than Danny Boyle — understands how much work the horror genre can do for you, which is a way of saying that The Bone Temple doesn’t lay on its political subtext with a trowel (you can go to Wicked: For Good for that). Instead, she communicates the loss of civilization through the noble Dr. Kelson and his wistful memories of “shops and fridges and telephones and personal computers.” There was, he sighs, a sense of certainty: “The foundations, they seemed unshakable.” But shake they did, and here we are on Zombie Island, aka the UK, and DaCosta isn’t about to let us forget that, with riotous scenes of flesh-eating carnage whenever things get too quiet. Like Dr. Kelson, she puts on a good show. Part 3 can’t come soon enough.
Title: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Release date: January 16, 2026 (US)
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Director: Nia DaCosta
Screenwriter: Alex Garland
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parr
Running time: 1 hr 49 mins