28 Years Later: The Bone Temple's Ending Breaks All The Horror Rules, And I Have Theories About Samson's Future

Major spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, so be warned, and don’t make Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal angry.

Though I’ve already shared a lot of love for Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later sequel in my glowing Bone Temple review, I had to completely stay away from talking about the ending there (for obvious reasons), to the point where I could have burst. Now that the critically lauded genre-masher is now out there to watch amidst other 2026 movie releases, the time is right to talk about how wildly subversive the movie’s third act and conclusion is, and how antithetical to traditional horror it all feels.

Similarly to how Danny Boyle and Alex Garland shattered the mold anew by expanding this horror universe nearly three decades after 28 Days Later evolved the zombie subgenre, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple continuously upends expectations and breaks storytelling rules enough that the movie’s truly batshit endgame actually feels felicitously apropos. And lawdy lawd, has any horror movie ever delivered a cliffhanger quite like Samson? Drop the needle onto that Iron Maiden record, because it’s time to rip the skin off of this rule-breaking ending.

Rule Break #1: More Protagonists Survive Than Not

A large majority of horror features rely on two genre tenets: tension and body count. More often than not, protagonists are introduced and developed only to inevitably become villain fodder. The Bone Temple tweaks that formula both by having an antagonist group that outnumbers the good guys, and by limiting the overall number of new characters. (Neither are brand new concepts, obviously.)

So in the end, only one core hero is dead, along with one extremely minor protagonist and the group of barely developed family members. Meanwhile, Spike, Kelly (more on her below), and Samson are still alive, as are Cillian Murphy’s newly returned Jim and his daughter, and we can assume the pregnant Cathy who ditched Spike is still out there. And since we didn’t see Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie or the infant Isla or others from the first film, I’m also counting them as survivors here.

Rule Break #2: A Sub-Villain Becomes An Anti-Hero

As the visually distinct member of Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal’s cult that gets the most screentime early on, Erin Kellyman’s Jimmy Ink is clearly set up to be the traumatized Spike’s guardian angel. (Or devil, in this case.) But that doesn’t keep her from following the brutal and disturbing orders that Jack O’Connell’s Jimmy lays out for his minions, under the fraudulent guidance of Old Nick. She’s totally into the idea of an evil dark lord, so it’s not as if she’s a pillar of virtue even by the end of the movie.

Still, despite her youth and naivety, she held room for the idea that Jimmy Prime was full of shit, so whenever the curtain was pulled back on that grand truth, she didn’t hesitate to punish him with the same sadism he made others suffer. In the end, reverting from her cult moniker back to Kelly, she and Spike take off as a duo, destined to team up with Jim and later make Jamie uncomfortable. How many horror movies give villains this kind of a vaguely redemptive arc?

Rule Break #3: The Big Bad Is Already (Presumably) Eliminated

Given Jack O'Connell's stellar Jimmy-fied introduction at the end of 28 Years Later, I fully expected his cult of personality to still loom large in a third film, in the way that horror's most sickening monsters can never quite be put down for good. But no Jigsaw-length reign for Jimmy, it seems, after he was given an inverted crucifixion ahead of likely getting ravaged by Samson, as hinted at by that jump scare.

Of course, the existence of the infected is still as dangerous and deadly as ever, so it's not as if this franchise's future will be free from baddies. Still, in the way that serial killers were always a threat while Hannibal Lecter continued sating his particular appetite, I even hoped Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal would be kept alive for sequel purposes, which definitely isn't my go-to desire with most modern horror movie antagonists.

Rule Break #4: All Signs Point To Hope In The End

Ever since Carrie rattled audiences with its shock ending, way too many horror movies have repeated the trick of undercutting a happily-ever-after conclusion with a last-second reveal that the central source of evil has not been conquered completely. It's truly a mild surprise anytime it doesn't happen, and once again, Alex Garland and Nia DaCosta sidestep such rote expectations and even go a step further by making The Bone Temple's ending all-out hopeful.

What better beacon of hope can there be than seeing Cillian Murphy's Jim is still alive after all these years? He also seems to have kept his wits about him since 28 Days Later's own hope-embracing ending, and it's too easy to foresee him taking Spike and Kelly in. (Which obviously means tragedy is coming, but still.) Though Kelson's death seemingly stalled any efforts to "cure" or reverse the Rage virus' symptoms, Samson's physiology itself is a secondary beacon of hope to latch onto, which leads us to the following...

Theory Time: I Believe Brains (Including Kelson's) Are Vital For Samson's Recovery

Though morphine alone is enough to stall Samson's bloodthirsty rampages, Kelson later leans into a mixture of medications to try and deaden the cloud of Rage in Samson's mind. The implication is that those efforts were successful, but I think Samson's own bestial and zombie-adjacent actions make for another unwitting stepping stone in the process.

Samson habitually returning to that destroyed train car plays into his humanity's continued presense, but it's seemingly only when he cracks open another person's skull and slurps on their brains that he has flashbacks to being a young boy inside that same train. This is quite the bizarre sequence for a franchise that has purposefully avoided traditional zombie movie elements like brain-eating. (After all, the infected are still technically alive.) So unless DaCosta threw it in there as a winking joke, it has to mean something.

Prescription meds often boost brain chemicals that patients are lacking, so it stands to reason that going straight to the source (i.e. another brain) would provide a far bigger dose of those same chemicals. Given the brains of the infected are already tainted, they likely aren't offering peak amounts of seratonin, oxytocin and whatever else would get Samson's mojo rising.

But what about Kelson's juicy, smart and information-filled brain? I think it stands to reason that when Samson left Kelson's bony empire, he went back to the train and imbibed on the brains of other infected, which would explain why the Alpha was still able to speak and have a somewhat clear mind after returning from a day completely free from the doctor's drugged-up injections.

Which leads to the second part of my theory: that eating Kelson's healthy brain will be like a Rosetta Stone that make's Samson more calm and rational on a semi-permanent basis. I think he'll be able to communicate with Spike & Co. in a way that makes it clear they're on the same side, and I think they'll find Kelson's research and figure out how to utilize it in a way that can help tamp down the Rage in others.

That's probably too optimistic an outcome, though, so maybe the idea will be that eating healthy human brains will be the only way to reverse the infection, thus providing a very disturbing moral quandary for Jim, Spike and anyone else who would love to spread the cure, but without also wanting to deplete the rest of the population.

However things turn out, one thing's for sure: I'll be in a theater seat ahead of opening night for any and all future 28 Years Later sequels, prequels, reboots, VR spinoffs, comic books and more. I probably don't need to show up at a theater to read a comic, but dammit, I'd also like some popcorn while I read.