28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review. A Story DLC, Not a Movie

Hollywood today is a strange place. It eagerly churns out expensive, trendy films, but rarely takes risks or embraces an auteur vision. The symbol of this era is the Marvel Cinematic Universe: recognizable, predictable, with no sharp edges. 28 Years Later, which we saw in summer 2025, proved to be an exception: the film didn't just continue a familiar story but developed it thematically, visually, and dramatically. In January 2026, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was released — and that feeling evaporated. It's no coincidence that Nia DaCosta handled directing duties, having made history with the failure of The Marvels. For her, this film represented a second chance at her career. How did she use it? Let's find out.

We covered the backstory in our previous review, so we won't repeat ourselves. Currently, it's known that Sony has greenlit a third film, and the duo of Danny Boyle (director and producer) and Alex Garland (screenwriter) remain at the helm. The franchise is still held by its creators rather than handed over to studio IP development managers.

The Bone Temple, however, was conceived as the second part of a trilogy — a film within the shared world but with a different authorial tone — and this had a fundamental impact. DaCosta worked within the classical production school: cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, Arri Alexa 35 cameras, controlled lighting, precise composition. Professional, expensive, and safe — but fundamentally different in spirit.

In 28 Years Later, Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle deliberately experimented: they moved the action to sunny, green, springtime England, extensively used iPhone 15 Pro Max with custom rigs featuring multiple smartphones, achieving a harsh, almost documentary texture — a direct heir to the visual language of the original. In The Bone Temple, only springtime England remains, which still impresses with its natural beauty.

But there's no room for experimentation. Moreover, the new film took a step toward even greater intimacy. While the first 28 Years Later occasionally created an illusion of scale, here they've almost completely abandoned it. The frame consistently features 5–6 characters, rarely up to ten, and this applies to both survivors and infected. There are practically no crowd scenes: zombies have ceased being a force of nature and have become individual, almost singular figures.

The film doesn't try to compensate for the lack of spectacle with editing or pacing. On the contrary, it deliberately reduces event density, shifting focus from survival as a process to existence within an already long-broken world. Against this backdrop, DaCosta's own words about one of her key changes being to increase the number of infected sound particularly odd.

The Bone Temple picks up without preamble with Spike's storyline (Alfie Williams) — a teenager who, after the events of the previous film, finds himself at a crossroads. He returned to the safe island and chose not to remain as Dr. Kelsall's (Ralph Fiennes) apprentice. Formally, this is presented as choosing a path and coming of age, but in practice Spike simply falls into the hands of Jimmy's gang led by Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell).

The trials awaiting the hero of 28 Years Later quickly transition from teenage bravado to the genre's standard set: captivity, humiliation, and initiation through violence. Spike passes it — and that proves sufficient for the gang to accept him as expendable material for further raids. There's no internal dynamic here: the hero doesn't change, doesn't make decisions, and doesn't influence what's happening. And is he even a hero if most of the runtime is occupied by Lord Jimmy and Dr. Kelsall?

The gang's next target becomes a tiny settlement of survivors on the mainland. The scene is built on direct anticipation of brutality: the uninvited guests are fed and given drink, they perform skits from Teletubbies, the viewer is led toward the massacre in advance (including the boiling water episode familiar from trailers). The problem is that the situation itself looks mechanical and implausible — three teenagers effortlessly take a group of adults captive without encountering resistance or self-defense. You could chalk it up to artistic license, but it's too noticeable to ignore.

The massacre itself is indicated rather than experienced. The film carefully balances on the rating's edge: there's buildup but no shock. When Spike can't bring himself to kill a peaceful resident, Lord Crystal decides to execute him for weakness, but plot armor works flawlessly. Instead of immediate punishment, the gang heads to Dr. Kelsall — a figure already familiar from the previous film.

Formally, this is explained by internal mythology. Lord Crystal considers himself the messenger of Old Nick (the devil) on Earth, and intelligence reports his close presence. At this moment, Kelsall, covered in iodine, is busy healing an infected person — a demon in the gang's terminology. The doctor, wandering through the temple of bones and keeping an alpha-zombie on a leash, makes the necessary impression on the teenagers and becomes grounds to postpone the execution pending higher approval.

What follows is a plot twist we'll deliberately not reveal. It concludes the storylines of Spike, Jimmy's gang, and Dr. Kelsall — and at that point, the film essentially ends.

That's it. That's the entire plot. A linear route with no branches, where dialogue states the obvious and twists are telegraphed a scene ahead. Evaluating the narrative here is difficult: it simply doesn't exist as a system. Instead of a story — a sequence of episodes connected by minimally necessary logic.

In interviews, Nia DaCosta claimed that The Bone Temple expands the franchise's existential themes through the juxtaposition of two viewpoints. Dr. Kelsall is presented as a humanist — someone who finds meaning in knowledge and faith in people. Lord Jimmy Crystal — as the brutal leader of a quasi-religious cult of himself, denying the value of life and morality.

On a conceptual level, this sounds like a philosophical conflict. On the film level — it doesn't work. Kelsall speaks in generalities, but we see neither a value system, nor internal logic, nor ethical boundaries. Lord Jimmy is simply a thug, a genuine psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He appeals to "demons" and "chosenness" simply to fill an intellectual vacuum.

These two figures aren't in philosophical opposition — they simply exist in parallel, intersecting exclusively along the plot trajectory. Though with such a premise, we should have seen a clash of ideas and the refutation of one. The script merely stylizes the "good-evil" axis externally, creating an illusion of depth where there's only imagery.

The lore portion of The Bone Temple is more substantial. Kelsall, a therapist by training, continues his research into the Rage virus and concludes that it's not simply an infection but a biological contagion compounded by severe psychosis.

The lead traces back to the first film: morphine temporarily calmed the infected, inducing a state resembling tetanic stupor. Now this observation leads to an experiment with an alpha-infected: what if you suppress aggression, stimulate the brain, and try to restore lost functions? Essentially, this demonstrates for the first time the possibility of curing the infected within the franchise.

At the same time, the research appears maximally grounded: no complex equipment, no laboratories — just a dugout, books, and years of observation. During viewing, the lore portion is the only remotely interesting aspect, but it's not the foundation of the plot.

The absence of internal dynamics manifests most clearly in the characters. They don't change — they simply exist in given circumstances.

Lord Jimmy Crystal is the film's most textured character and, simultaneously, the most straightforward. Jack O'Connell finally got an opportunity to show his range, and his character isn't a charismatic madman but a crude, brutal psychopath sincerely believing in his own chosenness. His motivation and backstory are spelled out for us, which adds volume to the character, though the ending is predictable and internal transformation is entirely absent.

Spike: in the second part, the hero turns out to be frustratingly passive. He's still the same frightened teenager who recently left shelter and is completely unprepared for the big, dangerous world. Alfie Williams effectively conveys the weight of his position, the contrast between his previous safe life and current nightmare. But on a dramatic level, the character freezes: Spike lies, makes excuses, survives, but almost never makes decisions and doesn't influence the course of events. The plot happens to him, not because of him.

Dr. Kelsall is the only character with a clearly defined internal vector, but this vector is already complete by the film's start. He long ago accepted the possibility of his own death and states this himself near the finale. As a result, Kelsall functions more as a carrier of lore and ideas than as a living character with developmental potential. Ralph Fiennes' performance is beyond question — he's precise and convincing, but dramatically the character simply has nowhere to go.

The remaining actors fulfill their roles almost entirely functionally. Memorable, perhaps, is the girl from Jimmy's gang who increasingly doubts and argues with the leader. But even she remains within the archetype of a thorn in the side — a plot element, not an independent character.

The sound design of The Bone Temple is high quality (it would be strange if they'd botched that too): twigs crunch, wind howls, zombies shriek, fire crackles, beams collapse under their own weight — but don't expect anything supernatural. Hildur Guðnadóttir's industrial-electronic score creates appropriate accompaniment, but there's not much of it: most of the sound budget went to rock insertions.

The film's most effective scene is the finale with Kelsall, who to the deafening roar of Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast performs a mad fiery dance, trying to convince Jimmy's cultists of his demonic essence. Besides Maiden, Radiohead and Duran Duran also play, adding a bit of fun to the picture.

The main problem with The Bone Temple is that the film lacks a hook and barely works as a standalone piece. Unlike the first film, where exposition revealed the island, survivors, local rules, and characters, here the viewer isn't given time to immerse: it's assumed they remember everything and immediately engage with what's happening. The effect of a series started mid-season — without context, the story loses meaning and dramatic weight.

The brutality in The Bone Temple is human, not zombie-horror: it's more a chronicle of marauders and bandit raids than post-apocalyptic terror. Tension barely holds: scenes are short, editing choppy, and many potentially frightening moments were already shown in trailers. As a result, the film evokes neither fear nor empathy, and watching degenerates is boring and simply uninteresting.

The Bone Temple feels like an intermediate franchise episode — story DLC for the first 28 Years Later. The film doesn't create the proper atmosphere and doesn't evoke particular empathy: we saw the scary scenes in trailers, and human cruelty is perceived more as a freak show than genuine horror. Its logic works only in the context of concluding Spike's storyline and preparing for the franchise's third part — where Cillian Murphy will return. Essentially, The Bone Temple is needed only as connective tissue, and separated from the series — secondary and nearly empty.