I'm begging you, please watch 28 Years Later The Bone Temple on Netflix ASAP

Maybe if everyone streams it on Netflix we'll get another sequel

When 28 Years Later released in theaters in the summer of 2025, it was a major event. In a year packed with breakout horror hits, the long-awaited follow-up to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Days Later was one of the most anticipated. And while it may have been too experimental and weird to get the same kind of Oscar buzz as Sinners or Weapons, 28 Years Later still performed well at the box office, bringing in more than $150 million on a budget of $60 million.

Which is why it was such a surprise when Sony buried the film’s direct sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, with a muted January release.

Unsurprisingly, The Bone Temple didn’t do as well as the previous movie. Despite positive reviews, it lost money at the box office. In the months since, plans for a third movie to close out the 28 Years trilogy have seemingly stalled out. But perhaps there’s a chance to turn things around now that the movie is about to reach its biggest audience yet.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is streaming now on Netflix, which means you’re officially out of excuses for not having already seen it. The good news is that it’s also an excellent movie that pushes the franchise in some surprising new directions and sets up a sequel that I desperately hope still gets made.

The Bone Temple picks up days (or maybe even just hours) after the events of 28 Years Later, but it’s a wild pivot in style, tone, and plot. Instead of a family-focused story about young Spike (Alfie Williams) and his parents during their travels across zombie-infected England, the action shifts to a showdown between the forces of good and evil, represented by Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connel) respectively. Kelson is a former doctor on the verge of a major breakthrough that could actually undo the zombie virus, while Jimmy is a Satan-worshipping cult leader who recruits Spike to join his gang of marauding, murderous children in a delusional effort to cleanse the world of evil.

The first half of the movie splits these two plotlines, jumping back and forth between the violent horror of Jimmy’s story and the surprisingly comedic adventures of Dr. Kelson and his unlikely zombie friend Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). When the two finally meet, the result is explosive and unpredictable, challenging our very understanding of what the zombie subgenre is capable of.

Alex Garland, who came up with the original idea for 28 Days Later after playing Resident Evil, wrote the script for both 28 Years Later and The Bone Temple. Both films take the franchise in bold new directions, but The Bone Temple is his biggest swing yet with scenes that seemed nearly unfilmable when he first wrote them.

While Danny Boyle directed both 28 Days Later and 28 Years Later, Nia DaCosta (The Marvels) took over for The Bone Temple. Her approach is less experimental than Boyle’s, but she delivers a perfect entry in what’s clearly meant to be a trilogy, with Boyle positioned to return for the final entry in the story.

That is, assuming the final entry happens at all. While Sony originally greenlit a third movie based on the positive buzz around The Bone Temple, its box-office belly flop may have given the studio second thoughts. The last time Boyle commented on the film’s status, he told The Hollywood Reporter, “We’re still trying to get the money.”

That’s not exactly the green light he once had to finish the trilogy.

Hopefully, if enough people watch The Bone Temple on Netflix, it can push Hollywood back in the right direction and convince someone to fund the sequel we all desperately need. Either way, at least now everyone who missed this incredible movie in theaters has a chance to see it at home.