"It was a wonderful way to deepen everything that I loved about the first film and then get us into the third...” Nia DaCosta on 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Nearly a quarter of a century after 28 Days Later detonated the zombie genre with its jittery digital fury and apocalyptic melancholy, the Rage virus still refuses to lie dormant. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s original film didn’t just redefine infected cinema; it hard-wired a very British sense of social collapse into global pop culture. Its legacy has loomed long over horror ever since, from prestige television to low-budget indie nightmares. Now, with 28 Years Later earlier this year and its follow-up The Bone Temple (set for release in January 2026), the franchise doesn’t just return, it mutates into something altogether new.

What makes this continuation feel genuinely momentous is not nostalgia alone. Boyle and Garland are back, steering the world they created into a far more expansive future, and crucially, they’ve handed the torch to a filmmaker who understands exactly what that world meant and still means.

Nia DaCosta (pictured above with star Jack O’Connell and whose genre pedigree includes the bruising social horror of Candyman), steps into infected territory with reverence, confidence and a willingness to let the franchise evolve into something stranger. Which isn’t surprising, given that for DaCosta, this isn’t just another studio project, it’s personal: “I had the DVD in my house when I was like 12 and it became one of my favourite films,” she said at a recent showing of The Bone Temple. “It became a seminal piece of filmmaking for me, and it made me realise even more that I wanted to make movies.

“So last year, when I found out this was happening and that I might be able to be the one to direct it, it was a dream come true. Stepping into it was so fun, because I love Danny, I love Alex, and our producers are amazing. It was a really great experience.”

That sense of awe never hardens into imitation. Where 28 Years Later re-establishes the ravaged UK decades after the original outbreak, The Bone Temple immediately pushes outward. DaCosta’s sequel doesn’t leap forward in time, but instead tightens the screws, picking up almost immediately after the events of 28 Years Later, following Spike deeper into a fractured world that feels less like a wasteland and more like a collection of barely-held-together myths.

“The Bone Temple picks up maybe a day or two after Spike (Alfie Williams) meets the Jimmies, and he’s in quite a pickle with those guys!” she explained. “At the end of 28 Years Later, we introduced Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), and we introduced the fact that Spike is now going off on his own. So we get to see more of the world. We move away from Holy Island, and we get to see more of Kelson’s life. We get to see where he actually sleeps and lives. We see more of Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), which is really exciting. We meet new characters in the world who become important in the third film. So it was a really wonderful way to deepen everything that I loved about the first film and then get us into the third.”

We see more of Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and his world in The Bone Temple.

Indeed, that sense of connective tissue is vital. This isn’t a standalone sequel, but the middle chapter of something far more ambitious, a trilogy that treats the infected apocalypse not as a single catastrophe, but as a generational trauma. Communities splinter. Belief systems emerge. Survival mutates into ritual. The Bone Temple is where the mythology thickens. DaCosta’s horror sensibility is perfectly suited to this stage of the story – Candyman proved her ability to fuse social commentary with visceral dread.

“It’s a mix of wanting to be in this world since I saw the first film and to just make the film that I saw in my head,” she said, “and having support from my producers, my crew, my amazing cast, to have it happen.”

Adding fuel to that fire is Jack O’Connell playing Sir Jimmy Crystal, complete with ’90s tracksuit and striking blond hair. The character aptly forced his way into conversations circling 28 Years Later, though we only saw him briefly in the movie (who could forget that ending?!). O’Connell is having a very good (and very genre-filled) year, having played a vampire in Ryan Coogler’s very excellent Sinners earlier this year.

“When we cast him last year, he and I would have these conversations while he was in America shooting Sinners. So he’s doing that, which I knew at the time would be amazing, because Ryan’s amazing and and so he’s doing that, and that accent, and then he’s talking to me with a Scottish accent! He is great. It’s amazing. I’m really excited for people to have another villain moment [with him].”

The cast around him is equally formidable, including the gravitas of Ralph Fiennes, lending mythic weight to a world that feels increasingly ritualised and uncanny. “I got to work with Ralph Fiennes, national treasure. So that was crazy,” she enthused. “And then Chi-Lewis Parry and Erin Kellyman and Alfie Williams, everyone was just so amazing. So just being able to make movies the way I want to make them was so great. And I love what’s here, so I hope you guys love it too!”

Jack O’Connell returns as Sir Jimmy Crystal in The Bone Temple.

If audiences are expecting easy answers or familiar rhythms to what they’ve seen before, DaCosta was quick to dispel that notion. This is a film designed to unsettle, to provoke, and to linger. “I can explain it to you, and you’d still be like, ‘What the hell did I just watch?'” she laughed. “I hope that you don’t find my diversion too diverting!”

In other words, The Bone Temple doesn’t exist to comfort. It exists to challenge what this franchise can be and where it can go next. With Boyle and Garland reclaiming their creation, and DaCosta fearlessly reshaping it, the 28 universe feels alive again in the most dangerous way possible. Rage, after all, never truly fades. It just finds new forms.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple opens in cinemas on January 14th. Go behind the scenes of the movie even further here…