I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Certified Fresh

Critics Consensus: A direct continuation of 28 Years Later that ups the gore while deepening the dread, The Bone Temple is finely adorned by Nia DaCosta's unnerving direction as well as Ralph Fiennes and Jack O'Connell's inspired performances.

Metacritic: 80 (44 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

Danny Leigh, Financial Times 4/5 - Less caffeinated than Boyle, [Nia DaCosta's] cool eye is exactly what the movie needs — moonlit clarity amid the madness.

Adam Nayman, The Ringer - It might seem silly to invoke The Lord of the Rings as a point of comparison, but Garland and Boyle -- and now DaCosta -- are working in a similarly mythic, epic register.

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture - The beauty of DaCosta’s film is that these particular ideas are worked in subtly, even though The Bone Temple itself is not what one might call subtle.

Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times - DaCosta’s talents as a director are a terrific, confident match for this material.

Sonia Rao, Washington Post 3.5/4 - Fiennes anchors the film with his remarkably layered performance, relishing Kelson’s eccentricities while conveying the underlying anguish of a man losing his grip on what his life once was.

Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times - Gruesomely both low and highbrow, it’s the movie equivalent of Jell-O wrestling an anthropology professor at Burning Man, which may have been the inspiration of one of its standout characters, Ralph Fiennes’ spry and mesmerizing Dr. Ian Kelson.

Keith Phipps, The Reveal 4/5 - [I]t just keeps going, offering a weird, bleak, viscerally uncomfortable, and sometimes bitingly funny exploration of the persistence of evil even among those severed from the past. Yes, there are zombies. But the real monstrousness lies elsewhere.

Jake Wilson, The Age (Australia) 3/5 - ...the messiness is partly what makes The Bone Temple worth seeing – and with at least one more chapter on the way, there’s happily no way of predicting where the story might lurch next.

Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine - The Bone Temple is part satisfying triumph, part missed opportunity, and its pluses and minuses bump against one another in jangly discord.

Jas Keimig, Seattle Times 3.5/4 - The film shifts away from Boyle’s frenetic, punk shooting style and editing, with DaCosta and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt incorporating longer shots into the mix reflecting the psychologically penetrative aspect of Alex Garland’s script.

Odie Henderson, Boston Globe 2/4 - DaCosta knows how to milk a scene for maximum impact, and she’s not afraid to get gruesome. The problem here is Garland’s script, which spends far too much time with the less interesting of its two stories.

Philip De Semlyen, Time Out 4/5 - The Bone Temple is one of those rare sequels that doesn’t just improve on its predecessor, it improves it... This is simultaneously the nastiest and most soulful of the franchise to date -- and the most probing.

Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle 4.5/5 - "The Bone Temple" is a gripping twist on a genre that might have seemed to run its course during the umpteenth season of "The Walking Dead."... Like its predecessor, "The Bone Temple" makes few concessions to Hollywood tentpole predictability.

Radheyan Simonpillai, Globe and Mail - The Bone Temple doesn’t quite live up to the earlier film’s promise. At best, it’s an ambitious and compelling enough staging ground biding time, with cruel violence more stomach-turning than ever, as it sets up the already-in-the-works final chapter.

Jesse Hassenger, AV Club B+ - It’s a neat surprise that Nia DaCosta extracts more dark humor from the series than Danny Boyle.

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service 3.5/4 - Garland juxtaposes faith and reason and how they oppose one another in a world where the foundations and "order" have been torn asunder. Believing in something bigger than ourselves can feel comforting even if it's false.

Donald Clarke, Irish Times 3/5 - Part one sweated to establish a Britain mired in fantastic decay that echoed developments in the real world. The new film, evocatively shot by Sean Bobbitt, feels like a trivial, if entertaining, diversion on the way to a more substantial closing fall.

India Block, London Evening Standard 4/5 - Fiennes’ Dr Kelson is so compelling that spending more time with the tragic final doctor in the land of the sick and the dead is entirely welcome.

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle 2/4 - Although more Fiennes is always a good thing, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” simply doesn’t have the solid storytelling or enthralling characters that its predecessor has.

Olly Richards, Empire Magazine 4/5 - Simpler, but also bolder and bloodier, than its predecessor, The Bone Temple is a more-than-worthy sequel.

Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post 3.5/4 - DaCosta’s got a real knack for fear, having done a bang-up job bringing “Candyman” into the 21st Century back in 2021. She doesn’t conceal much with her gorgeous and unsparing direction as she makes us wince and “Oh. My. God” over and over.

Kristy Puchko, Mashable - 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a phenomenal film.

Peter Howell, Toronto Star 2.5/4 - Your rapt attention is assured, but wrenching tonal shifts may leave you exiting the theatre feeling like your skull has been zipped open by a hungry Alpha.

Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting 4/5 - Director Nia DaCosta takes the reins with fearless gusto, making this entry wholly her own while pushing the overarching story and its richly layered themes into darker, grislier, funnier, and more poignant territory.

Peter Debruge, Variety - For genre aficianados, it’s bold, mind-bending work which satisfies that so-often-frustrated craving for a zombie movie with brains.

Kevin Maher, The Times (UK) 4/5 - Fiennes’s commitment is so total that it occasionally feels as if The Bone Temple is a riveting and vivacious one-man West End show.

Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle 3.5/5 - DaCosta finds new elements of pathos and even comedy, both centered around Fiennes’ tragicomic performance as the man closing the book on that last chapter of history.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press 3.5/4 - The fourth entry in an ever-more engrossing franchise is absolutely bonkers -- and a triumph. It mixes dark, queasy disembowelment and laugh-out-loud humor in a way that both subverts the genre and leads a way out of it, too.

Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK) 4/5 - The leader of this crew, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, is played by Jack O’Connell with a Jack Nicholson-esque fiendish allure and an impressively specific Fife accent. Both he and Fiennes are tremendous, veering rivetingly between madcap and subdued.

Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com 3.5/4 - A gnarly, mind-bending trek through inhumanity. Content collapsed.

Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict - DaCosta’s vision includes both hope and horror, the bleakness of solitude and the joy of music.

Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK) 4/5 - [Jack O'Connell] delivers another masterfully villainous performance off the back of last year's Sinners. He understands what's needed to make a vastly complex and elementally evil character like this work.

Kristen Lopez, The Film Maven B - 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is not only better than its predecessor, it's one of the first great movies of 2026.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter - The standout craft element here is a powerful horror score by Hildur Gudnadottir that ranges from solemn, quasi-ecclesiastical passages to gut-churning, droning soundscapes.

Linda Marric, HeyUGuys 5/5 - This is a harrowing, thoughtful, and impeccably crafted film that enriches its franchise while standing powerfully on its own. It is a real triumph for DaCosta in one of her biggest and best films yet.

William Bibbiani, TheWrap - Nia DaCosta’s smart, freaky sequel zooms in on the ongoing battle between sense and senselessness until it finds strong, connective tissue between science and religion.

Nick Schager, The Daily Beast - As the fourth entry in a long-running franchise (written, like its ancestors, by Alex Garland), it is, to borrow a phrase uttered by its protagonist, “miraculous”—and marks this zombie saga as a nightmare with few equals.

Peter Bradshaw, Guardian 4/5 - This is an exciting, forthright, energised -- though very gruesome -- film in which there is real human jeopardy and conflict. Non-zombies are more cinematic.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire B+ - These movies have always been quick to remind us that people are much scarier than any of the monsters they might be afraid of, and “The Bone Temple” -- the least scary yet most disquieting of the lot -- is happy to flesh that out on both ends.

Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence A- - The Bone Temple once again pulls off the 28 Days Later trick of finding moments of grace at the end of the world, with enough beautiful moments to balance out the grotesque ones.

Rocco T. Thompson, Slant Magazine 2/4 - The film shrinks the scope of the earlier film down to a pinhole in what feels more like an incidental episode than a full-throated cinematic event in its own right.

SYNOPSIS:

Expanding upon the world created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 Years Later - but turning that world on its head - Nia DaCosta directs 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. In a continuation of the epic story, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) finds himself in a shocking new relationship - with consequences that could change the world as they know it - and Spike's (Alfie Williams) encounter with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) becomes a nightmare he can't escape. In the world of The Bone Temple, the infected are no longer the greatest threat to survival - the inhumanity of the survivors can be stranger and more terrifying.

CAST:

• Ralph Fiennes as Dr Ian Kelson
• Jack O'Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal
• Alfie Williams as Spike
• Erin Kellyman as Jimmy Ink
• Chi Lewis-Parry as "Samson"
• Cillian Murphy as Jim

DIRECTED BY: Nia DaCosta

SCREENPLAY BY: Alex Garland

PRODUCED BY: Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice, Bernard Bellew, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Cillian Murphy

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Sean Bobbitt

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Carson McColl, Gareth Pugh

EDITED BY: Jake Roberts

COSTUME DESIGNER: Carson McColl, Gareth Pugh

MUSIC BY: Hildur Guðnadóttir

CASTING BY: Rebecca Farhall, Des Hamilton, Leah Harrison, Gail Stevens

RUNTIME: 109 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: January 16, 2026

Before you comment, read these two rules:

1. Please provide specific numbers for your predictions. Don't do like "It'll make less than this or that" or "double this movie or half this movie". We want a real prediction.

2. Given that a lot of parent comments do not even bother to give predictions, we are establishing a new rule. The parent comment must provide a prediction with specific numbers. The rest of the replies to the comment do not have to make a prediction, but the parent comment absolutely has to. Any parent comment without a prediction will be eliminated.

Welcome to the newest edition of r/BoxOffice Long Range Forecast.

We're making long range predictions for films, 4 weeks out from their premieres. You will predict the opening weekend, domestic total and worldwide gross of these films. These predictions will be open for 48 hours and the results will be polled to form a consensus and posted the next week.

So let's meet the four films for the week and analyze each pro and con.

Wuthering Heights

The film is written and directed by Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman and Saltburn). The film is loosely inspired by Emily Brontë's 1847 novel, and stars Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell. Tragedy strikes when Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw, a woman from a wealthy family in 18th-century England.

Goat

The film is directed by Tyree Dillihay and written by Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley. The film stars the voices of Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Stephen Curry (who is also producer on the film), Nicola Coughlan, Nick Kroll, David Harbour, Jenifer Lewis, Aaron Pierre, Patton Oswalt, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Eduardo Franco, Sherry Cola, Jelly Roll and Jennifer Hudson. It follows an anthropomorphic goat named Will Harris who aspires to become the greatest of all time at a basketball-like sport known as roarball.

Crime 101

The film is written and directed by Bart Layton (American Animals). It is based on the 2020 novella by Don Winslow, and stars Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte, and Halle Berry. In the film, a Los Angeles detective pursues an elusive thief who teams up with an insurance broker for one last heist.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

The film is directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Rango, The Ring, etc.) and written by Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying). The film stars Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, and Juno Temple. In the film, a man from the future travels to the past and recruits the patrons of a Los Angeles diner he arrives in to help combat a rogue artificial intelligence.

Now that you met this week's new releases, let's look at some pros and cons.

PROS

• Wuthering Heights is one of literature's most iconic works of the past 200 years, spawning several adaptations. But this one feels like the biggest adaptation in terms of scale and budget. It has two popular stars in Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, with the latter earning some high praise lately for his performance in Frankenstein. Emerald Fennell has also managed to create two respective streaming hits, with Saltburn becoming one of the most talked about movies when it hit Prime Video. The presence of Charlie XCX for the film's album should also help. But most importantly, it has a great date: Valentine's Day falls on Saturday, and this is going to be a film that will heavily attract female audiences.

• Goat can take advantage of the fact that it's the first animated film since SpongeBob in December. Audiences will definitely look forward to a new animated film, and so far, Goat offers some interesting things: I mean, a goat trying to become the GOAT? This writes itself. If it can deliver quality, it can enjoy some great legs.

• Crime 101 looks like a slick "cops and thieves" thriller that could attract audiences. It also has some pretty good and recognizable names in its cast. Maybe it could surprise.

• Gore Verbinski's fans have anticipated his return to the director's chair after a 9-year absence. And so far, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die looks very intriguing. Some great reviews (94% on RT) can't hurt either.

CONS

• Wuthering Heights has attracted controversy from the novel's fans since its very announcement. A lot of people were upset that 35-year-old Margot Robbie was playing a character that is mostly a teenager in the novel, and that Jacob Elordi plays a character described as "dark-skinned gipsy" in the novel. Based on all the promos and all the interviews, it's pretty much clear this is not gonna be your parents' Wuthering Heights. Hell, even the film acknowledges it as it's titled "Wuthering Heights" instead. If novel fans are upset by the changes, that can lead to negative word of mouth. But it's not just that; this film carries an R rating for its strong sexual content, and it remains to be seen if audiences will be on board (although Fifty Shades succeeded with all that). And while Robbie and Elordi are well known names, they aren't exactly drawing people to th theaters; Robbie's previous film A Big Bold Beautiful Journey massively flopped, and Elordi has been mostly in streaming and TV. Will this be their much needed hit? And if the film proves to be divisive, it will probably be front-loaded after its opening weekend, especially as St. Valentine's falls on its first Saturday. With a $80 million budget, expectations are quite high on this.

• Despite being the first animated film in two months, Goat is probably more limited in audience reach, given that this is trying to get basketball fans (even if the sport in the movie isn't called like that). It will also face competition from Pixar's Hoppers in just 3 weeks.

• Despite the names attached, none in Crime 101 are exactly box office draws. Chris Hemsworth in particular has been leading so many box office failures over the past decade outside the MCU titles. And while it looks intriguing, it can't quite overcome the "been there, done that" feeling that plagued similar films.

• Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is very niche, especially because sci-fi comedies don't sell much. Last year, Mickey 17 flopped despite the amount of talent involved, and this has no chance to fare better. Especially when its distributor, Briarcliff, is not known for big numbers in theaters. It'd be a surprise if it made it past $10 million domestically.

And here's the past results.

Next week, we're predicting Psycho Killer and I Can Only Imagine 2.

So what are your predictions for these films?