YNOT at the Movies

What's more frightening at the end of the world: the monsters who no longer think, or the people who still do? "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" (UK/USA 2026 | 109 min.) picks up exactly where the previous film left off, plunging back into a dystopia where survival depends less on avoiding infection than on enduring the cruelty of those who exploit it.

As fractured communities struggle to hold themselves together, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) works obsessively toward a discovery that could alter humanity's understanding of the virus. Meanwhile, Spike (Alfie Williams) falls in with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), the leader of a roaming zombie-killing squad not unlike the group that rescued him at the end of the previous film. What initially appears to be a necessary, even heroic, means of survival quickly reveals a darker underside, as the squad's violence turns inward and Spike's sense of safety gives way to entrapment.

The film offers only partial logic for how uninfected communities manage to persist. The infected are portrayed as unnervingly strong and feral, yet residents rely on wire fencing to keep them out, a defense that feels more symbolic than credible. The barriers don't truly protect so much as isolate, and the film never fully clarifies why they work at all. What actually destabilizes life inside the settlement isn't the threat beyond the fence, but the trauma inflicted by Jimmy Crystal's gang.

Jimmy is no visionary tyrant. He's a nasty, street-level thug who preys on the weak and unprotected. His menace lies not in physical dominance or appearance, but in the ease with which he commands others to carry out violence on innocents. Within the guise of a zombie-hunting unit, his authority thrives on intimidation and obedience rather than purpose, making his cruelty feel disturbingly plausible and, ultimately, more terrifying than the infected themselves.

Director Nia DaCosta stages the horror with unapologetic intensity, transforming gore into spectacle. The grotesque is treated with near-reverence. Dr. Kelson, coated in iodine to ward off infection, looks like a walking wound. His efforts to recover traces of humanity in the infected, particularly in Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), gesture toward hope, yet his intentions and methods remain frustratingly unclear. Even if one soul could be reached, the film makes clear that the apocalypse itself cannot be reversed.

The film closes on an exhilarating finale that offers a measure of release, delivering a sharp, visceral payoff that feels earned. In a world defined by suffering and moral collapse, that final surge of momentum provides a rare, hard-won satisfaction, a brief sense that the scales have shifted.

"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" opens in theaters on Friday, January 16, 2026.