And with that, the first great film of 2026 has arrived.
I was extremely excited for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, partly because I enjoyed its predecessor, but mainly because it marks director Nia DaCosta’s return to the horror genre after her 2021 Candyman sequel. DaCosta is one of my favorite directors working today, and her range never ceases to amaze me. Hedda, her art-deco take on Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler made my top ten films of 2025, so a one-two punch was totally welcome. Given my affinity for her many styles of filmmaking, I may be a bit biased, but Bone Temple feels like the Dark Knight to its predecessor’s Batman Begins.
A major difference between the two films is scale. Even though Temple is still a big film with a lot of big ideas, it’s not really keen on hopping around the United Kingdom. This is because we’ve already been introduced to all of its main players — Spike (Alfie Williams), Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), and an “Alpha” infected Dr. Kelson named Samson (Chi Lewis-Perry) — and they all interact with each other in a relatively small area of land in this particular story.
For all her prowess with the infected (read: zombie) action and other horror elements here, the clear reason DaCosta was hired seems to be that she knows how to balance what is essentially a small-scale dramatic arc with a handful of over-the-top grisly (and sometimes just plain crazy fun) sequences. Those tones are so effectively managed here, and because Danny Boyle (who established the 28 franchise years ago with the influential 28 Days Later) infused the previous film with both his trademark kinetics and a deep sense of British history, Temple is allowed to play out for its story’s sake. We’ve been introduced to the stakes of this world, but now we see the dark heart of its despair with little exposition, along with one major reason for hope.
Because it has more of a dramatic focus, Temple also operates in stillness for a good chunk of its runtime. Very rarely do we see a horror film with this many long, unbroken shots which are not setting up jump scares, and the film is all the better for it. Both Fiennes and O’Connell benefit from this quieter route the film takes, both doing some of the best work of their careers, especially Fiennes. Dr. Kelson interacts with Samson much more in this film, and what starts as Young Frankenstein-esque humor between Kelson and the sedated Samson develops into something much more profound. Jimmy Crystal is this iconically strange amalgam of a man-child and a Satanic cult leader. He talks about Teletubbies as if it was in the Bible and enforces a Jimmy Saville tracksuit uniform among his sadistically violent crew. In this world, probably very few people — Crystal included — ever knew about even a quarter of Saville’s crimes, since he was likely killed or infected or both (good riddance) before they would have been exposed.
The only major bit of exposition in the film doesn’t really feel like exposition at all, and that’s its brutal opening where the rules of the Jimmys’ fight club are introduced (Crystal makes all his “fingers” call themselves Jimmy). Crucially, this is also where we’re first attuned to screenwriter Alex Garland’s sly sense of humor throughout the film, even through the Jimmys’ most heinous acts, which get increasingly more sick and depraved. If you can’t stomach Saw, you probably won’t stomach this film, but that tricky dark humor can get you through it if you’re on the fence.
All of these elements are so well balanced by DaCosta and her cast and crew that it sneaks up on you how much the film has gotten away with by the end. It’s one of the most extreme mainstream films you’ll ever see, but also one of the most subtle and still. I always knew DaCosta was a phenom, but to give us a delicious sampler platter of all of her abilities in one knockout film — following up a legend like Danny Boyle, no less — is another level of phenomenal.| George Napper
