Just when you thought it was safe to unlock the door and put the recycling out, here comes another dose of rage-infected horror. We didn't have to wait the 23 years for the next instalment in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later franchise this time around. A direct sequel to 2025's 28 Years Later, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple sees Nia DaCosta take up the directing mantel, while Danny Boyle and Alex Garland receive producer credits.
Landing at Cineworld on 14th January, you can watch 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple a day early with our double bill screening. Alternatively, you can get caught up on everything that has happened so far in the horror franchise with our overview below.
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28 Days Later (2002)
Danny Boyle’s original movie redefined zombie cinema, replacing shambling undead with hordes of virus-infected humans driven by pure rage. The catalyst for this rather terrifying scenario is a group of animal rights activists accidentally releasing a chimpanzee from a lab in Cambridge, not realising that said primate is infected with a highly contagious ‘Rage’ virus. Cue national collapse.
Twenty-eight days after the outbreak of the virus (hence the title), Cillian Murphy’s character Jim, a bike courier, wakes from a coma to find London deserted. As he navigates this eerie hellscape, he encounters other survivors Selena (Naomie Harris), Frank (Brendan Gleeson), and Hannah (Megan Burns), and together they attempt to find their way to safety. But as time goes on, they realise it’s not just the virus-consumed humans they need to be wary of, but some of the unaffected too.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Released five years after 28 Days Later (and, coincidentally, set five years after the events of that film), 28 Weeks Later saw Danny Boyle stepping back to executive producer, with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo taking up the reins as director. The film opens with a terrifying prologue in which a group of survivors, including husband and wife Don and Alice (played by Robert Carlyle and Catherine McCormack), take refuge in a cottage, only to be attacked by an army of infected humans. With Alice refusing to leave behind a stricken child, Don flees by himself, assuming his wife’s fate is sealed.
Twenty-eight weeks on, however – with the US military now overseeing the repopulation of London – Don is reunited with his children, and they discover that their mother survived the earlier assault due to having a genetic immunity to the virus. She’s still infected, though, and when Don sneaks into quarantine to speak with her, he ends up getting dosed. Consequently, all hell breaks loose again; with the military struggling to keep order, Don’s two kids and a handful of survivors – including a heroic Idris Elba and a sniper played by Jeremy Renner – try desperately to make it out alive.
28 Years Later (2025)
28 years after the Rage virus first took hold of the UK, a scanvenger (Jamie, portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his son (Spike, played by Alfie Williams) decide to cross the fortified causeway that connects Lindisfarne to the rest of Great Britain, as a part of Spike's coming-of-age hunting ritual. What they discover is far more than virus-riddled zombies. Meeting an "alpha", a variant of the infected that is stronger and smarter than the regular victims of the Rage virus, they end up leading it back along the causeway where the village helps to kill it with a ballista.
More than the advances of the virus, though, Spike quickly becomes disenchanted with his own father and flees with his mother, Isla, who suffers from a mentally debilitating illness, to try and get help. Along the way, Isla helps an infected pregnant woman give birth to an uninfected child. The mother is then shot and Isla and Spike must take on responsibility of protecting the baby. Meeting Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Finnes), this is where we first witness the Bone Temple, constructed at the hands of Kelson utilising the concept of memento mori.
When his mother, who Kelson diagnoses with terminal brain cancer, chooses to be euthanised by Kelson, Spike goes out on his own, disillusioned by the village across the causeway and his own father. 28 days later, he is picked up by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) and his gang of adults, all adopting the style of one Jimmy Savile.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)
Following on immediately from the previous film, we witness the scale of Crystal's gang of disturbingly dressed killers as Spike is inducted into it. Elsewhere, Dr Ian Kelson continues his studies into the Rage virus, forming an unexpected new relationship which could change the course of the world.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple arrives at Cineworld on the 14th January. Book your tickets to see it in a number of special formats including 4DX, or opt to watch the double bill with 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple screening back-to-back on the 13th January.
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BOOK 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE TICKETS
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