"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" Official Trailer: Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell Face Humanity’s Collapse in Nia DaCosta and Alex Garland’s Apocalypse Horror Sequel
Fiennes returns as tortured survivor Dr. Ian Kelson, while O’Connell commands the screen as a sinister cult leader in this second installment of Boyle and Garland’s long-running zombie saga.
The obvious metaphor for setting a movie in a zombie apocalypse is tapping into the anxiety of living in a corrupt world where institutions have failed and society has collapsed. It’s what makes zombie movies so entertaining—the fact that we can put ourselves in these situations and ask: could we survive this? And though we hate to admit it, the answer is likely no way, not by a long shot.
This uncomfortable truth is exactly why we’re drawn to these stories again and again. But 28 Years Later, the long-awaited sequel to director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s groundbreaking 28 Days Later, which came out earlier this year to strong reviews, digs deeper into the deterioration of the human spirit.
The franchise may have begun with the chilling image of London streets frozen in eerie silence, overrun by hordes of rabid infected, but now the focus has shifted. The new objective is to explore how much strength a human needs before succumbing to the very darkness they’ve been fighting against.
It’s no longer about destroying the infected or establishing a safe zone. It’s about the slow erosion of moral boundaries when survival becomes the only imperative. How many impossible choices can someone make before they stop recognizing themselves? And once that happens—are we still who we are?
Yes, it’s an existential question, asked in a horror movie no less. But by peeling away the layers of humanity after nearly three decades in hell, what’s left is nothing we’d want to be. The scariest part of the franchise now may not be the infected rage monsters roaming the countryside, but the survivors who’ve become feral themselves.
Perhaps the true terror of Dante’s Inferno isn’t the circles of sin and depravity, but the countless bodies jammed together, crawling to stay alive. The brutal desperation. The profound suffering. The suffocation of life itself.
This is what 28 Years Later seems to understand: apocalypse doesn’t create noble heroes rising above adversity. It creates human termite mounds, where people burrow into whatever hierarchy keeps them breathing for another day. The infected may have started this hell hole, but the survivors have perfected it.
And with that sunny sentiment, we bring you the first look at 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, shot practically back-to-back with its predecessor.
This time, director Nia DaCosta takes over the reins. Best known for directing 2021’s Candyman remake and Marvel’s The Marvels, DaCosta works from a script by Alex Garland, with Garland, Danny Boyle, and Andrew Macdonald producing.
The first official trailer proves once again that this franchise knows how to cut a killer preview. Like its predecessor, it’s a masterclass in tension—distilling pure dread into two and a half minutes of perfectly calibrated anxiety. Man, these trailers know how to get under your skin. Chef’s kiss!
With the 28 Years Later trailer famously featuring a quote from Rudyard Kipling’s 1903 poem “Boots” to evoke that sense of relentless exhaustion, this trailer for The Bone Temple follows suit. It leans on a quoted passage, delivered like an old-time narration, to frame the brutal imagery with a haunting, almost mythic weight—as if the apocalypse itself has slipped into harsh prophecy.
“Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation. In fact, it may not even exist at all.
Many of the things we take for granted will one day pass away completely. Men will no longer communicate. We may have diseases and barbarism.
The whole world will cease to make any sense. Look at the incredible changes we’ve experienced and survived. And yet even greater changes are still to come.”
We couldn’t quite pin down the exact source of this quote, but our best estimate is that it’s a variation—or a poetic embellishment—of something Arthur C. Clarke once said during the 1964 BBC program Horizon: The Knowledge Explosion. The key difference being that Clarke’s vision of the future leaned toward the “absolutely fantastic,” while this version twists it into something much darker.
Ralph Fiennes returns as Dr. Ian Kelson, the emotionally tortured survivor whose unsettling new bond could alter humanity’s destiny, while Spike (a returning Alfie Williams) descends into a relentless nightmare under the grip of Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell, fresh off a superbly sinister turn in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners).
At this point, O’Connell might just be Hollywood’s go-to guy when you need someone to play the heavy—someone a little off, yet unnervingly grounded enough to make the menace feel all too real. Here, he commands the screen as a cult leader whose twisted notion of devotion comes with a bizarre uniform: tracksuits and platinum blonde wigs. His flock includes Erin Kellyman (Solo: A Star Wars Story, Willow), Emma Laird (The Brutalist, Mayor of Kingstown), and newcomer Maura Bird.
And since no 28 Years Later trailer is complete without a nightmare centerpiece, English MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry crashes in as a hulking infected brute, his eyes so veiny and swollen they look just like his bicep muscles ready to tear through something... or someone.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the second installment of a planned trilogy, though there’s still no word on if—or when—the third film will officially move into production. Nevertheless, The Bone Temple is set to hit theaters worldwide on January 16th.
Official Synopsis:
Expanding upon the world created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 Years Later but turning that world on its head - Nia DaCosta directs 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. In a continuation of the epic story, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) finds himself in a shocking new relationship - with consequences that could change the world as they know it - and Spike's (Alfie Williams) encounter with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) becomes a nightmare he can't escape. In the world of The Bone Temple, the infected are no longer the greatest threat to survival - the inhumanity of the survivors can be stranger and more terrifying.
Directed by: Nia DaCosta
Written by: Alex Garland
Produced by: Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice, Bernard Bellew, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland
Executive Producer: Cillian Murphy
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry
Exclusively in movie theatres 1.16.26.