I enjoyed 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, an engrossing sequel that’s gotten off to a strong start with critics but is running behind James Cameron’s silly Avatar: Fire and Ash, which still tops the box office in its fifth week. Really, people?

In my view, the worst 28 Days/Weeks/Years movie is still better than the best Avatar. I’m a fan of this consistently innovative franchise and I’m happy to follow it for as long as it lasts. The ending of The Bone Temple very clearly sets up the next sequel, which will wrap up the 28 Years Later trilogy director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have long envisioned. But presumably the 28 Years Later movies could go on and on if this trilogy does well enough.

Shot back-to-back with 28 Years Later (2025), The Bone Temple was once again written by Garland, but Boyle is only a producer this time around, with Nia DaCosta smoothly taking over directing. Bone Temple picks up close to where the last film left off, with the boy Spike (Alfie Williams) a captive member of “the Jimmies.” They’re a seven-member group with a psycho-killer ethos dictated by their leader, self-proclaimed Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), who brags that he’s the son of Satan and wears an upside-down cross on a chain to prove it. The lesser Jimmies all wear ratty blonde wigs to resemble Sir Lord Jimmy, and they all participate in gory scenes of violence and torture, victimizing any human survivors from the zombifying “rage virus” that they encounter on the English mainland.