“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”…Did Everyone in Hollywood Just Reread “Frankenstein?!”
The announcement of the return of the 28… franchise was met with skepticism. 28 Days Later… is widely regarded as one of the best zombie movies ever made, but its sequel, 28 Weeks Later…, did not garner the same appreciation. In 2025, the original director and screenwriter, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, returned to the Rage-infested world with 28 Years Later…. The third installment in this trilogy wove a story of shared trauma, a communal sense of loss, and the ever-enduring experience of growing up. In short, 28 Years Later… became an example of what it can mean to return to a beloved franchise and inject new life into it. Less than one year after 28 Years Later… came out we have the release of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. While Garland stayed on to write the sequel that was shot immediately after 28 Years Later…, Nia DaCosta is now in the director’s chair.
The Bone Temple picks up where the events of 28 Years Later… end. Spike (Alfie Williams) has been brought into the world of the Jimmys, a riveting gang led by Jimmy (Jack O'Connell). Confusingly, all of the members are also named Jimmy, but the leader Jimmy refers to them as his Fingers. Jimmy believes he’s the son of Satan, which is what fuels his acts of violence toward non-infected humans. Nearby, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) continues his work on the ossuary, but he’s struck by the actions of Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the Rage-infected Alpha who trolls the forest nearby. Samson shows signs of trusting Kelson, and this surprises the doctor. No one thought the Rage virus was reversible, but Kelson believes he may be close to a breakthrough. Little does he realize that the path of the Jimmys will soon cross his own.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
The problems with The Bone Temple don’t come from DaCosta as a director, but rather with Garland’s script. After 28 Years Later… and the peek into the new world order, it’s disappointing that The Bone Temple doesn’t offer a deeper-still reflection on living among the infected. The Jimmys are a group of young people who were born into a world consumed by the zombies and desperate for a purpose. Even so, not all of them are sold on Jimmy’s sermons and self-proclaimed connection to the devil. What makes the 28… franchise interesting all these later is that, at its best, it acts as an honest depiction of what the aftermath of a zombie outbreak might be. In the ways new communities and social norms rise up while people are pushed to the fringes in search of an explanation for the reality that confronts them.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
The Bone Temple presents us with a group of violent outsiders whose loyalty is only to their pack. It’s not humans vs. zombies. It’s the Jimmys vs. everyone. Fear and brutality act as religious gospel, but the target of their violence is not the infected. It’s their fellow man. This is the first time in the franchise where the prevailing aggressor is humanity. Most of the other films are about survival. When violence breaks out, it’s from the human toward the zombie. Or it’s a person who decides to save their own skin at the expense of someone else. We’ve never seen the outright, violence-seeking behavior that exists in the Jimmys, and this inherently makes their existence more interesting. Why have they turned to such extreme violence? On paper, it works well as a counterbalance to Kelson’s advancements, but in actuality, the foundation of the Jimmys is so shoddy that the audience is left with more questions than answers. That’s not to say that the foundations of a pseudo-religious movement in a post-zombie apocalypse shouldn’t be shoddy, but if the viewer is supposed to be wary of Jimmy’s power over his Fingers, it should feel purposeful. There’s a difference between an unstable foundation due to an in-film purpose and an underdeveloped script.
Perhaps The Bone Temple suffers from what 28 Years Later… benefited from. The Bone Temple was filmed immediately after 28 Years Later…, but maybe Garland and Boyle needed more time to shape the path their franchise would take. There are threads of interesting ideas at play here, especially with the violent religious zealot vs. the pacifist atheist, but the script doesn’t venture deeper than that. Sure, it’s interested in these supposedly antithetical identities and concepts, but it also doesn’t know what to do with them. Most damningly of all, The Bone Temple doesn’t have anything to say beyond the idea that humans, even when faced with hordes of zombie killers, can still be evil to each other. It’s as though everyone in Hollywood reread Frankenstein and discovered that the doctor was the villain all along. Poor Frankenstein was merely a victim of circumstance. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple doesn’t expound upon the world of its predecessors and undermines the complex emotions laid out in the franchise’s return.
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