An Ossuary and Jimmy Crystal: 28 Years Later Bone Temple

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a 2026 post-apocalyptic horror film and the sequel to 28 Years Later.

At a glance

Release date	January 13-14, 2026 (United Kingdom); January 16, 2026 (United States)
Director	Nia DaCosta
Writer	Alex Garland
Starring	Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry
Runtime	109 minutes
Budget	About $63 million
Box office	About $58.5 million worldwide

Plot summary

Spike is taken in by Jimmy Crystal’s cult. Dr. Ian Kelson forms a connection with Samson, an Alpha Infected. The infected are no longer the only threat. Shot back-to-back with its predecessor. Cillian Murphy returns.

Picking up directly where 28 Years Later ended, Spike is taken in by the Fingers — the gang of tracksuit-wearing Satanists led by the psychopathic “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal — and forced to kill in a death match as his initiation. He is even renamed “Jimmy,” like every other member of the gang. One of them, the comparatively empathetic Jimmy Ink, quietly starts shielding him.

Elsewhere, Dr Ian Kelson continues building his Bone Temple, an ossuary raised to honour everyone the Rage Virus took — and keeps receiving visits from Samson, the huge Alpha Infected, who has grown dependent on the morphine in Kelson’s blow darts. Samson stops attacking him. When Samson speaks his first word — “moon” — Kelson realises the virus may drive its victims through psychotic hallucination rather than simple rage, and that it might be treatable.

The two stories collide when the Fingers, hunting sacrifices for “Old Nick,” mistake the iodine-covered Kelson for Satan in the flesh. Forced to play the Devil in a pyrotechnic performance set to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast,” Kelson turns the tables: the Fingers crucify their own leader on an inverted cross. Kelson dies in the chaos — but a lucid Samson thanks him by name first. In the final scene, Spike and Ink — her real name is Kellie — flee a pack of infected, watched from a distance by Jim, the survivor of the original outbreak, and his teenage daughter, Sam.

Production

The Bone Temple is the second part of a planned trilogy and was shot back-to-back with 28 Years Later — filming began on 19 August 2024, roughly three weeks after the previous film wrapped. Nia DaCosta took over as director from Danny Boyle, who stayed on as a producer alongside Alex Garland, who wrote the screenplay. DaCosta deliberately avoided imitating Boyle’s style; where she framed the previous film as being about family, she described this one as a film about the nature of evil. Unlike its predecessor, which was famously shot largely on iPhone 15 Pro cameras, The Bone Temple was filmed on the Arri Alexa 35. The Bone Temple set was built at Redmire in North Yorkshire. Chi Lewis-Parry’s full-body Samson suit took seven artists six to eight hours to apply, could only be used once, and was applied more than 25 times during the shoot; his dance with Kelson to Duran Duran’s “Rio” was improvised. The score is by Hildur Guðnadóttir.

Cast and characters

Ralph Fiennes as Dr Ian Kelson, the former GP building the Bone Temple to memorialise the epidemic’s victims.
Jack O’Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, the Fingers’ Satan-worshipping leader.
Alfie Williams as Spike, the boy taken in by the Fingers.
Erin Kellyman as Jimmy Ink / Kellie, the Finger who defects to protect Spike.
Chi Lewis-Parry as Samson, the Alpha Infected who befriends Kelson.
Emma Laird as Jimmima, the gang’s most sadistic member.
Cillian Murphy (uncredited) as Jim — his first appearance since 28 Days Later, setting up the planned fifth film.

Reception

Critics made The Bone Temple the best-reviewed film in the series: 91% on Rotten Tomatoes from 348 reviews, a score of 81 on Metacritic (labelled “universal acclaim”), and an A− CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences, with Fiennes and O’Connell singled out for praise. The box office told the opposite story — $58.5 million worldwide against a $63 million budget, a clear underperformance next to its predecessor’s run, despite the reviews.