28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Drops its First Official Trailer
Sony dropped the first trailer for the second film in its revived rage-virus saga—28 Years Later: The Bone Temple—and it’s a gnarly mood piece that pivots the franchise from survival horror to something closer to cult fever dream.
This time around, Nia DaCosta steps in to direct, with Alex Garland writing and Danny Boyle producing. It’s a swift follow-up to Boyle’s summer 2025 entry, signaling that this new trilogy is moving like, well, the infected.
The trailer sketches two parallel tracks: Spike (Alfie Williams) pulled into the orbit of velvet-suited warlord Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) and his blonde “Jimmies,” and Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) testing the limits of a relationship with an Alpha carrier named Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). The line between caretaker and captor blurs, and the teaser all but declares that humans—not the infected—are the real nightmare now. It’s a sharper, weirder provocation, and it tees up a mainland arc only hinted at in the first film.
Aesthetically, DaCosta leans into ritualistic imagery and dread-soaked pacing, while the soundscape does heavy lifting: the folk hymn “Conversation With Death” threads through the cut as an Arthur C. Clarke voiceover (sourced from a vintage BBC Horizon) forecasts hubris and collapse. It’s the kind of trailer that sells vibe over plot—precise color, wrists-tight framing, and just enough body horror to make you wince. Add in the confirmation that Cillian Murphy briefly pops up here (before a larger presence in the third film), and you’ve got a sequel that feels connected yet intentionally unhinged from Boyle’s return.
Last June’s 28 Years Later re-ignited the brand under Sony/Columbia, with Boyle and Garland back in the saddle and cameras rolling back-to-back on this follow-up. That first chapter planted new characters and a post-apocalyptic UK that’s since splintered into factions; The Bone Temple looks set to crack that world open and lean into the ideology wars that rise when the virus stops being the scariest thing in the room. If the finished film matches the trailer’s unnerving confidence, this mid-trilogy swing could be the series’ strangest—and maybe boldest—move yet.
The bottom line here: The Bone Temple trailer already promises an art-house-adjacent infection of the franchise—less sprinting, more scheming; fewer answers, more cultish questions—and a winter date that arrives fast.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hits theaters on Jan. 16, 2026.
