28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review

Most people don't have the time, money, or energy to watch many movies, so when you do get a chance to watch something, you want it to be worthwhile. That's why Rotten Tomatoes exists: to give a snapshot of whether a movie is worth your time. But does it always work? I'll be watching all of Rotten Tomatoes’ Certified Fresh movies from this Wikipedia list, and we'll see if these movies are really worth the hype.

Movie 8 of 2026:

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DaCosta, is a direct sequel to 2025’s 28 Years Later. Despite the similarity in name, this one felt really unique compared to all of the other movies in this franchise. DaCosta really puts her own stamp on this film instead of just mimicking Danny Boyle. This was very welcome to me. I always appreciate a director's uniqueness, and I already loved Hedda from last year, so I was very excited to see her take.

Another thing I was excited about in this movie was delving deeper into the character of Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) and the little cult he has created. At the end of the last movie, they very randomly parkour into the scene. They felt straight out of an anime. Despite their ridiculous appearance, it's apparent that Spike (Alfie Williams) is in some real danger now that they found him.

The cult of Jimmy's was honestly much more sadistic than I was expecting. I wasn't expecting them to be nice and helpful, but I wasn't expecting them to flay the skin off of random families either. I don't think this felt unwarranted or out of left field, however. The performances were rightly unhinged, which added a sense of dread. It really did hammer home the theme that most zombie media is about: people are scarier than the zombies.

The other focus of this story was Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). I have to say, I did enjoy his story and art more in this one than I did in the last. In the last movie, he was more of a mysterious figure as opposed to a main character. Here, we get to see more of what he's like as a person and what he does in his daily life. The emotional core here was definitely Kelson befriending Alpha zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). They definitely dropped some bread crumbs that I'm sure will get resolved in the next film regarding a potential cure.

There were a lot of fun scenes here, mainly Dr. Kelson's ritual,  but I also never felt like anything was being taken too lightly. I think this is the perfect line that a horror film can tow. I'm actually excited to see how all of this wraps up. This definitely turned out to be my favorite of the franchise, and that is mostly due to DaCosta's fantastic direction.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Is it worth the hype?:

It is! Nia DaCosta really puts her own spin on this franchise. The performances were perfectly unhinged, and the brutality never felt dulled. Give this a shot if you love horror, zombies, or just well-made movies.