28 Years Later Sequel Reviews: Critics Are Saying The Same Thing About The New Film

Less than a year after the horror reboot 28 Years Later hit cinemas, the sequel is now in UK cinemas.

The second instalment in what filmmaker Danny Boyle has said he intends to be a new big-screen trilogy is subtitled The Bone Temple, with Nia DaCosta taking over on directing duties this time around.

Critics have already been weighing in on the new movie, with almost all agreeing that this latest addition to the dystopian series is darker, gorier and more unsettling than its predecessor.

Here’s a selection of the reviews for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple...

The Guardian (4/5)

“It’s very rare for a fourquel to be the best film in a franchise, but that’s how things stand with the chequered 28 Days Later series [...] This is an exciting, forthright, energised – though very gruesome – film in which there is real human jeopardy and conflict.”

The Independent (4/5) 

“[Danny Boyle] has passed over the reins to Nia DaCosta for [this] sequel. And that new voice, that fresh perspective, has helped push The Bone Temple further than its predecessor ever dared to go.”

Empire (4/5)

“With the best film since the original, DaCosta has laid down a challenge to the series’ godfather: Top that. Dare you.

“Simpler, but also bolder and bloodier, than its predecessor, The Bone Temple is a more-than-worthy sequel.”

Rolling Stone (5/5)

“Here is a film where unrepentant violence (primarily dispatched by the gang of Jimmies) and a general air of malevolence arrives within minutes, throws your jaw to the floor and ensures that it remains there for the subsequent two hours. But it’s testament to Alex Garland’s tight script and Nia DaCosta’s intimate direction that it never feels overly gratuitous, nor shocking for shock’s sake.”

Variety

“The Bone Temple turns out to be far more bloody than the earlier films in the franchise, stoking shock and fear from gratuitous acts of sadism perpetrated by Jimmy Crystal and his gang. If this group earlier struck you as some kind of zombie-hunting patrol, committed to ridding England of the infected, think again. Here, they are revealed to be a nihilistic band of renegade Satanists, who pillage for pleasure, invading homes and killing all who cross their path.”

The Standard (4/5) 

“Whereas 28 Years Later wrestled with ideas about British nationalism, isolationism, and patriarchy, DaCosta’s Bone Temple is an even darker, gore-slicked thing that slithers around in your skull. Humanity, and the depravity to which it can stoop when religion is perverted, cults flourish in isolation, and children are groomed for violence, are the central themes here.”

The Telegraph (4/5)

“The Bone Temple is an elegy for a once-great nation in ruins… with Jimmy Savile cults and spinal-cord removals, the latest film in Alex Garland’s zombie series will rattle even hardened horror fans.”

The Times (4/5)

“In the latest instalment of the zombie franchise it’s up to Fiennes to provide the emotional, intellectual and comedic fireworks. Thankfully, he manages it.”

IndieWire

“A strange, hysterical, and thrillingly audacious continuation of a saga about the nature of faith in a godless world, The Bone Temple might appear to be a more traditional genre offering than its immediate predecessor, but don’t be fooled by the fact that it wasn’t shot on an iPhone: This is very much the part two that 2025’s smartest and most humane studio horror movie deserves.”

Digital Spy (4/5) 

“One thing you can’t accuse the sequel of though is playing it safe. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a strong continuation of the series, one that manages to stand on its own as an excellent whole while satisfyingly setting up the final instalment.”

The Hollywood Reporter

“Fiennes is magnificent — sinewy and feral in appearance but erudite in manner, his isolation and years of living rough having done little to curb the magniloquence of a posh education. Kelson is a man of science and an atheist, but not without a touch of mysticism. The film is most effective when it stages a clash between the doctor’s radical but rational school of thought and the barbarism of paganistic religious fanaticism.”

The Irish Times (3/5)

“This fourth episode – sometimes straying into torture porn – is the most gratuitously nasty of the series so far. Early on, a knife fight ends with blood fountaining from a femoral artery. An inverted crucifixion played out to key lines from the Gospel of St Matthew may once have generated protests but is now more likely to trigger weary rolling of eyes. It’s as disgracefully diverting as it is silly.”

Den Of Geek (3.5/5)

“DaCosta’s general approach to tone and aesthetic in the horror space is a good deal grislier, and at times Grand Guignol, than anything we’ve previously seen in this series.

“Those instincts served her well in her Candymanredo but come off as purely nihilistic in this film during an especially repellent torture sequence that will test most viewers’ patience. The centerpiece sequence is obviously meant to echo the barbarity of man throughout history, but the set-piece proves more dispiriting than provocative.”

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in cinemas now.