HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) – It didn’t take long: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the first great movie of 2026, as Alex Garland and the team of collaborators have reinvented the zombie genre yet again with a scintillating and captivating new entry.

By comparison, the $63 million "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" is visually polished. It looks more like a big-budget action movie than its post-apocalyptic horror predecessor. Again, it's far superior in terms of objective video quality, but subjectively, it takes away some of what made the first movie special.

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are back with their fast-moving infected, the sprinting horrors that redefined modern zombie cinema when 28 Days Later arrived in 2002. That original film, driven by Garland’s lean script and Boyle’s inventive use of lightweight digital cameras,

The Bone Temple" director Nia DaCosta breaks down the biggest spoilers, from Cillian Murphy's return to a game-changing moment.

The Bone Temple begins rolling out in mid-January 2026, its early reception has already set it apart. Critical responses have been notably strong, with Rotten Tomatoes score sitting proudly at 93%, which places it above 28 Years Later and 28 Weeks Later.

At the very end of the movie, after the main story has concluded, we finally see Jim (Cillian Murphy), the protagonist of 28 Days Later. Murphy is an executive producer on these new films, but this is the first time he’s appeared on-screen in one of them, and his scene reveals a lot in just a few short moments.

The Bone Temple opened in theaters this weekend, but it's fallen short of industry projections and will be beaten by Avatar: Fire and Ash.

He’s returned there again with “The Bone Temple,” ably directed by Nia DaCosta, and he’s certainly working on the unsubtle end of the allusion scale. That’s fine, probably even good: This is a postapocalyptic zombie movie, and in the world of these characters, the time for subtlety is long past.

Meanwhile, Avatar: Fire and Ash ‘s running global cume rises to $1.3 billion, while Zootopia 2 at $1.7 billion WW is the highest grossing MPA Animated title ever. Zootopia 2 by end of Monday looks to be less than $7M away from crossing $400M at the domestic B.O.

If you're fresh out of The Bone Temple, 28 Years Later writer Alex Garland used this horror game to craft the series, and it's perfect for your Steam Deck.

The Bone Temple" will test the box office staying power of the zombie franchise as it tracks lower than "28 Years Later."