28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Dr. Kelson finds himself in a shocking new relationship with consequences that could change the world as he knows it, while Spike’s encounter with Jimmy Crystal becomes a nightmare he can’t escape.
Release date: 14 January 2026 (UK)
Director: Nia DaCosta
The infected are back, and they’ve built something truly terrifying. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the fourth chapter in the blistering franchise, hits like a sledgehammer to the skull. Directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Alex Garland, this 2026 horror onslaught was shot back-to-back with its 2025 predecessor, creating a one-two punch of pure apocalyptic chaos.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, and a fierce cast, the film crawls out of the grave in the UK on January 13th, 2026, as part of a gut-churning double feature, before standing alone on the 14th. The US gets its dose on January 16th.
Director Nia DaCosta, handed the keys to this post-apocalyptic Britain after films like Candyman and The Marvels, does something kinda spectacular here. She doesn’t just follow Boyle’s playbook. She tears a few pages out, sets them on fire, and stages a pyrotechnic lip-sync number to Iron Maiden in the glow. The result? The first great horror movie of 2026, no question.
Where 28 Years Later was this grim, coming-of-age fairytale seen through a kid’s eyes, The Bone Temple immediately pivots, gets its hands dirty. It latches onto the two most intriguing threads left dangling from that cliffhanger: the feral, iodine-slathered doctor building his memorial of bones, and that band of Clockwork Orange marauders in terrible blonde wigs.
So we get this wild tonal split. A tale of two zombie movies, really. On one side, Ralph Fiennes’s Dr. Ian Kelson. He’s out there in his bone temple, listening to Duran Duran on vinyl and accidentally forging a stoner-bromance with Samson, the pantsless alpha-infected. It’s strangely sweet, oddly funny, a man of science finding flickers of a soul in the most monstrous place.
Alex Garland’s script weaves these threads toward an inevitable, spectacular collision. It’s a film obsessed with belief, what we cling to when the world ends. A twisted faith in a sadist. The cold comfort of medical ethics. The desperate hope for a cure. DaCosta juggles these bleak themes with a visual aplomb that’s all her own, moving from grimy, gut-churning violence to moments of unexpected, grassy-field tranquillity.
A sequel is already in development, proving this franchise has more lives than a cat in a zombie apocalypse, and is about as hard to get rid of as a certain disgraced TV host in the public consciousness. Too soon? The infected think so.
Grab your weapons. The temple awaits.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review – Nia DaCosta’s Gnarly Horror Masterpiece
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden & George Wolf
Maybe you enjoyed last year’s coming-of-age survival story masquerading as horror, 28 Years Later. Respect. But if you believe the film lacked the genuine terror required for this franchise, director Nia DaCosta has you covered.
She delivers the first great horror film of the year with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, also written by Alex Garland. It picks up the most intriguing threads left untied last time: those of the band of Clockwork Orange-esque marauders who saved young Spike (Alfie Williams) from the infected, and the beautiful soul covered in iodine and living amongst the bones, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes).
There is more visceral horror in the first three scenes of DaCosta’s film than in the entire hour and fifty-five minutes of the previous installment.
Spike finds himself unwittingly and unwillingly one of the Jimmys, the seven blond-wigged disciples of Sir Jimmy Crystal (O’Connell). Meanwhile, die-hard Duran Duran fan (hell yeah!) Dr. Kelson might be making friends with Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the pantsless alfa-infected who left such an impression in the last film.
As the two stories lead toward inevitable collision, Garland, who wrote the 2000 genre masterpiece 28 Days Later before writing and directing some of the best genre films of the 2000s (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men, Civil War), delivers smart storytelling, impeccable world building, and scares aplenty.
And again, Garland is able to display an intense social conscience, with timely and relevant nods to humanity fighting cruelty for survival, and the desperate allure of demagogues.
O’Connell’s never given a bad performance, and thanks to Sinners, the world knows what he can do with a villain role. But the man’s been doing the charismatic sadist better than any actor since his 2008 breakout, Eden Lake. His performance here is diabolical and unsettlingly funny.
Fiennes is again in wonderous form, soulful, earnest and dear. DaCosta surrounds them both with a strong ensemble that more than sells this story.
The filmmaker (Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels, Hedda) returns to horror with aplomb, expertly weaving from the grimmest horrors the Jimmys can muster to the tender bromance blossoming over at the bone temple. And the climactic musical number she stages there is a thing for the ages.
Back in the summer of 2002, Danny Boyle released the single scariest movie to hit screens in a decade or more. The next two sequels are solid films. But credit DaCosta and her game and gamey cast for upping the ante to deliver everything a horror fan hoped to get last time out.
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