28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE
Skillfully made, gripping in places — and too extreme to recommend.
Should You Watch It?
There's real filmmaking craft here, and real moments worth noticing. The story includes gripping, even touching, hopeful scenes — Christian and redemptive content, including a fitting comeuppance for its Satanist villain and a man finding healing and gratitude. Those are the moments Movieguide always wants to celebrate.
But they're outweighed. Extreme graphic violence — cannibalistic attacks, torture, people burned and skinned alive — sits alongside full nudity and dozens of obscenities and profanities, including misuse of Christ's name. The film's better instincts get buried under a strong humanist attitude that never lets its Christian references become a real spiritual foundation.
The reviewer's own word for it is "excessive and unacceptable." That's the verdict this review carries forward: skip it, and look for something that honors its better moments without demanding you wade through the worst of them to find them.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESIn a Britain ravaged by a rage virus that turns the infected into cannibalistic monsters, Dr. Kelson, an atheist scientist, has discovered that iodine wards off infection — and that morphine can calm the infected enough to study, even befriend, them. Elsewhere, Spike, a young teenager, has found what looks like shelter with a group led by Jimmy Crystal. But Jimmy Crystal calls himself a Satanist, and his "shelter" is something closer to a nightmare.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars means the reviewer found this genuinely well-made — gripping, at times touching, with hopeful and redemptive beats that land. Director Nia DaCosta and writer Alex Garland are expanding the world Garland built with Danny Boyle in the earlier films, and by the source's account, the craft is there.
But craft isn't the whole verdict. The same review that praises the filmmaking calls the finished film "excessive and unacceptable" once the violence, nudity, and language are weighed against the good moments. A well-made movie can still be the wrong movie to spend two hours inside.
The Worldview
This film gets real credit for what it reaches for. There are genuine Christian and biblical references — allusions to Christ's crucifixion, a scientist naming a strong man "Samson," and a Satanist cult leader who gets a fitting comeuppance for his cruelty. A man ravaged by the virus finds healing and expresses gratitude. Those threads matter, and the source is right to name them as gripping and hopeful.
But the film doesn't build on them. Its worldview is described as a mixed pagan one, laced with humanist and even demonic content, and the Christian material never grows into anything a viewer could stand on. An atheist scientist is the story's moral center for much of the runtime, and the Satanist cult leader's downfall, however satisfying, arrives inside a world where the story's own compass keeps drifting between darkness and half-formed grace.
That's the honest tension of a fallen world dressed up as an apocalypse: rage, cruelty, and cannibalism let loose, with only flickers of redemption to answer them. Scripture has already described a world like that — "the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11) — and answered it not with a cure found in a lab, but with a new creation. This film gestures toward that hope. It never quite arrives.
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong mixed pagan worldview with humanist, demonic, morally uplifting content in an apocalyptic nightmarish world with disparate characters, including an atheist scientist, a psychotic Satanist cult leader with a case of arrested development, a female cult member who’s beginning to have doubts about the Satanist cult leader’s claims to be talking to Satan, a huge man who’s been infected by a virus that’s turned him into a raving murderous cannibal, and a young compassionate teenage boy who’s just trying to find shelter from a world gone insane, but there is Christian, moral content and Christian, biblical references, including references to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, scientist calls a large man Samson because of his muscles and height and long hair, the Satanist leader gets his comeuppance in a fitting manner, and man infected by the virus finds healing and redemption and expresses gratitude, but the Christian content is too undeveloped to give viewers a really good or reliable spiritual foundation
Foul Language
At least 66 obscenities (including 51 or so “f” words), three strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus Christ, one light profanity, and two vomiting scenes
Violence
Extreme graphic violence includes people infected by a rage virus attack uninfected people and bite them, a large man (described as an “alpha male”) infected by the virus rips off other man’s head and spine and then eats the brains, Satanist cult leader forces teenage boy to engage in a knife fight, and the boy accidentally cuts another guy’s femoral artery, but the cult leader orders his six remaining minions to let the guy bleed to death, Satanic cult invades a family farmhouse, and leader threatens the people there, Satanic cult leader orders his minions to string up the family in the barn and skinning them alive, the young man in the family escapes and starts a huge fire, and the cult leader loses more of his members, a brutal fight to the death follows with people running out of the barn on fire, and a young woman who wasn’t in the farmhouse when the people were taken hostage fights back but she eventually just runs away, more violence occurs in the movie’s final scenes
Sex
No sex scenes or sexual references, though movie hints that teenage hero and heroine may become romantic at some point (there’s another sequel coming)
Nudity
Two men are often shown fully naked in the movie’s first half, at least one woman attacking other people is shown fully naked, plus other scenes with upper and rear male nudity
Alcohol Use
No alcohol use
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
No smoking, but scientists uses morphine darts from a makeshift blowgun to subdue large infected man, and he befriends the man and uses morphine to subdue and calm him down;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Satanic cult takes people captive to torture them to death, and atheist scientist makes a deal with Satanist cult leader to save his life but decides to turn the tables on him.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
The film gives its Satanist villain a fitting comeuppance, but the reviewer says the Christian content around it never grows into a real foundation. What's the difference between a story that punishes evil and a story that actually points toward God?
Romans 12:19 · Micah 6:8Dr. Kelson, the atheist scientist, is one of the story's more compassionate characters. Can real kindness exist apart from faith in God — and what does that tell us about how He's made people, believers or not?
Genesis 1:27 · Romans 2:14–15A man ravaged by the virus finds a moment of healing and gratitude. Where do you see gratitude functioning as a first step toward something bigger in Scripture?
Luke 17:15–19 · Psalm 107:1The world of this film is described as filled with violence and rage let loose. How does the Bible describe a world like that — and what hope does it offer that this film doesn't reach for?
Genesis 6:11–13 · Revelation 21:4–5The Final Word
There's craft to admire here, and even a few moments worth calling good — but the film's own extremes bury them. This review's verdict stands as given: skip it. If you're planning a movie night instead, start with our latest family-friendly picks.
