The Bone Temple - Pretty Average

28 Years Later was one of the biggest flops of 2025 and for good reason. The story was haphazardly thrown together, plot lines were picked up and forgotten about, dialogue and world building were cringe inducing, and the hype generated by one of the best trailers for a movie I've seen in 20 years set high expectations that the film simply failed to meet. 

Pair that with the follow up film, 28 Years Later; The Bone Temple and you get a movie that is a decent self contained story that feels like it should have been a more original film instead of a sequel to a film like 28 Years Later. Characters from the first movie are relegated to the background or forgotten about entirely, half of the story follows a group of characters that are all despicable, while the other half is an actually decent story about a lone doctor struggling with socialization, survival, and ultimately curing the rage virus from the infected. 

The plot goes like this: After being rescued by the Telly Tubby Gang, led by the zealous Satanist ‘Sir Lord’ Jimmy Crystal, Spike is initiated into the group when he accidentally kills Jimmy Shite in a forced death match. Sir Jimmy renames Spike ‘Jimmy’ in accordance with the other Fingers, who include the more empathetic Jimmy Ink and the sadistic Jimmima. 

The Telly Tubbies raid a farm inhabited by survivors, including Tom and his pregnant partner, Cathy. In a barn, Cathy hides as Sir Jimmy orders the Telly Tubbies to skin the captured survivors alive as a sacrifice to Old Nick, believing that Satan is his father and hearing his voice in his head. When Spike takes himself outside, sickened, Jimmy Ink, who is growing disillusioned with Sir Jimmy, takes pity on him. Sir Jimmy offers Tom a place in the gang if he can win a death match against a Telly Tubby, but Tom is quickly outmatched by his chosen opponent, Jimmima, because of course he is. Cathy breaks her cover to kill Jimmima. 

Tom then sets the barn on fire with a gas tank, killing Jimmy Jimmy and burning several others before he himself is killed. Sir Jimmy sends Spike to capture Cathy, but Spike begs her to take him with her. Instead, Cathy incapacitates him and escapes and is then forgotten about by the plot for the rest of the film. 

Meanwhile Dr Ian Kelson continues to maintain his Bone Temple, an ossuary for those killed in the Rage Virus outbreak, while the Alpha Infected male, Samson, repeatedly visits him. Kelson deduces that Samson is fueling an addiction to the morphine from his blowgun: Samson no longer attacks Kelson, and his humanity resurfaces as he dresses himself and the two develop a friendship. Running low on sedatives, Kelson prepares to euthanise Samson, but is overjoyed to observe him articulating the word ‘moon’, suggesting that the Rage Virus may be treatable. 

With the gang’s numbers and morale low, Sir Jimmy threatens to kill Spike for his failure to capture Cathy, but Ink suggests that they visit Kelson whom she assumes is Satan, having observed his reddish skin and his interactions with the ‘demon’ Samson and let him decide Spike’s fate. Sir Jimmy leads the gang to the Bone Temple, where he meets Kelson alone. Upon 

discovering Kelson is not Satan, Sir Jimmy threatens to kill him if he does not impersonate Satan to reinforce Sir Jimmy’s leadership over the TellyTubbies.

Kelson fears that his research on Samson will be cut short and, in a premature attempt to grant him peace, administers him a cocktail of antipsychotics, hypothesising that the Rage Virus causes aggression indirectly via psychotic hallucinations. What are these antipsychotics? Where did he get them? How did he know what kind of cocktail to make? Don't know. Experiencing some clarity, Samson visits the abandoned train where he was infected and hallucinates a childhood memory of a guard asking for his ticket. After he once again produces speech, a nearby pack of Infected people attack him as if he were uninfected. 

That night, Kelson complies with Sir Jimmy’s demands, impersonating Satan in a pyrotechnic-laden performance of Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast while exposing the gang to hallucinogens. I'll leave the rest of the plot out of this review in case anybody wants to watch this movie but we get a tease into the 3rd film and basically no resolution for the current film. 

This movie just felt like a bottle neck episode in a TV show rather than a continuation of a story. Spike being relegated to a tertiary role and nothing of his father or the village ever comes up at all while we're introduced to the Telly Tubbies and Jimmy Crystal and follow them around for half the film. The unfortunate part of this is that the Telly Tubbies are the worst half of this film. The story of Dr. Kelson and Samson is exceptionally more interesting and I would have liked to have seen more of that part of the story. Ralph Fiennes is a great actor and plays the doctor just as well as in 28 Years Later, even with a pretty average script. Jack O'Connell also gives a great performance as Jimmy Crystal, although his only good character moment comes from a conversation between him and the Doctor. Otherwise he's just a mean, blood thirsty psycho, and anytime anybody thinks they're the "son of Satan" is cringe. 

Nia DaCosta did a better job directing this film than anything else I've seen from her, but that's not saying it was particularly good. I would say it was a pretty average offering from somebody who has the amount of movies under her belt as she does. The cinematography was the standout in this film. Sean Bobbitt did an incredible job showing the vastness of the world and the Satanic Performance scene by The Doctor was a lot of fun and very well done. 

Overall, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a pretty average movie, really only propped up by the utter gutter water that was its predecessor. Despite good performances by two of the actors and a good cinematographer, everything else was pretty meh. It's no surprise this movie isn't going to make its money back in the box office. $63 million for a horror movie is about 40 million more than should be spent on any horror movie. Recommend waiting for streaming for this one.