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.

The Jimmies are super-efficient zombie killers and move without fear among the howling, racing, flesh-and-brain-eating “infected.” Though Spike is so terrorized and incapable of being a true Jimmy, he’s in constant peril of being sacrificed himself. He’s repeatedly saved by Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), who develops a big-sister relationship with him as she begins to get disaffected from the group and the tyrannical rule of Sir Lord Jimmy.

If you saw the last movie, you’ll be expecting the inevitable encounter between the Jimmies and Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), the creator of the Bone Temple. He deals with life in the zombie deathscape by creating his towering skeletal tributes, edifices of piled-up skulls and leather-bound bones, which give the remains of each victim of the virus “a place” in the chaotic scheme of things. He’s also studied the infected in order to create a defensible underground bunker for himself and various self-protective practices that allow him to live relatively safely among them.

Now his new, more ambitious project is attempting to establish some sort of rehumanizing communication with the infected. His trial case is Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the giant Alpha of the infected, whose colossal size and strength allows for his preferred killing method, ripping the heads off both human and animal prey, with the spines still attached. At first, Dr Kelson uses a blowgun to sedate Samson with opiates from a safe distance. Soon the Alpha returns voluntarily to Kelson’s ossuary stronghold to enjoy the tranquil interludes the sedative provides. An odd friendship springs up between Kelson and Samson, which includes impromptu dance sessions made possible by Kelson’s impressive record collection.

Jimmy Ink, on a scouting mission, sees Kelson — his skin dyed orange from iodine — dancing with Samson in the Bone Temple. Sir Lord Jimmy becomes convinced Dr Kelson is Satan himself, even cavorting with a demon that follows his lead. Obviously, it must be time for Sir Lord Jimmy to reunite with his Hell-ruling dad.

So it’s a face-off between the two showiest characters in the movie. Fiennes is hard to beat, the orange-colored man holding onto his sanity in bleak isolation by rocking out daily to his favorite tunes. Ultimately, he stages a hilarious and memorable spectacle starring himself as Satan for the benefit of the murderous Jimmies, relying on Iron Maiden’s banger “The Number of the Beast” blaring from hidden speakers. But O’Connell is also very effective as the sociopathic Sir Lord Jimmy. You doubtless recall O’Connell as the gleefully jigging Irish vampire in Sinners. Two such memorable portraits of devilry in one year is risking typecasting on O’Connell’s part, because he’s awfully good at it.

Sir Lord Jimmy’s distinctive look — long platinum blond hair, purple tracksuit and gold chains — is based on that of notorious British entertainer and vile sex criminal Jimmy Savile. Knighted in 1990, “Sir Jimmy” was a beloved media personality and philanthropist until his death in 2011, after which it was revealed that he was a rampant “predatory sex offender” who victimized countless people of all ages over the course of six decades, including the elderly, but particularly targeting children. There had been sporadic investigations and loud rumors and even a few outright accusations that indicate the strong possibility that highly placed people and major institutions must’ve been covering for Sir Jimmy.

Savile used charity work as a cover for his crimes, which is why Sir Lord Jimmy in The Bone Temple describes his Jimmies’ torture sessions as “acts of charity.” The film’s exploration of evil focuses on the way Sir Lord Jimmy’s evangelical approach to committing atrocities holds his followers in superstitious thrall.

Still, my favorite performance in the film is by the unknown Lewis-Parry as Samson. He’s brilliantly effective in an almost dialogue-free part. He’s terrifying when standing like a titan on the horizon or rampaging through forests bellowing and red-eyed, and then he’s a figure almost out of mythic fantasy when, under the influence of opiates, he turns into a dazed, wandering, peaceable giant. When he does finally get a word in, it’s a good one: “moon.” He’s gazing up besotted at the full moon shining in the sky, and it’s surprisingly moving.

It’s a fascinating movie within a trilogy that’s shaping up to be an impressive continuation of the beloved franchise. And for those of you waiting for the return of Cillian Murphy as Jim, the protagonist of 28 Days Later, you’ll have reason to rejoice on that score too. Get thee to a theater, skip Avatar: Fire and Ash and see The Bone Temple instead.