As tradition dictates, a gaggle of prestige movies made it into theaters for official awards consideration by critics’ groups and industry guild members before the end of the calendar year. Some of the splashy films that came out in December subsequently linger in the multiplex for a while. Foreign and indie features that received brief runs to woo those voting on Oscar and Golden Globe nominations gradually show up in markets beyond New York City and Los Angeles. But the new releases from major studios and distributors that debut in January — particularly during the first couple weeks of the month — tend to be less than exalted fare.
Welcome to the January dead zone when it’s assumed that the public is burnt out on entertainment and short on cash after the Christmas holidays. Conventional corporate wisdom says that this is the best time to dump films that have been on the shelf for a while because no one believed they could be money-makers. Maybe the executive who championed the project is no longer at the studio. Perhaps there’s a consensus that something is so misbegotten that it would be better used as a tax write-off. If there are any higher-grade motion pictures reaching theaters at this time, they are outliers — few and far between.
In keeping with the low-brow detritus and exploitation flicks that generally roll out at this juncture, the first major releases of the month were Greenland 2: Migration — an inferior sequel to the 2020 global-catastrophe thriller Greenland — and Primate, which is driven by the frenzied response of attractive, horny young people trapped in a house with a deadly animal. This past weekend, things got considerably better on the quality front with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple — the latest chapter in the clever and rousing zombie-apocalypse franchise — as long as you’re on board with copious gore.
‘Greenland 2: Migration’
Greenland was workmanlike and engaging in its table-setting and emotional stakes with gruff everyman hero Gerard Butler and effortlessly sexy, savvy leading lady Morena Baccarin as a noble couple who must repair their marriage and save themselves and their son when a rogue comet strikes Earth. As the United States is devastated, the Garrity family undertakes a quest to find sanctuary inside a massive doomsday bunker in Greenland. It’s easy to be carried along on their journey and root for their success thanks to the appealing Butler and Baccarin. On the plus side, they have returned for a second go-round, as has director Ric Roman Waugh. Too bad Greenland 2: Migration, which coincidentally has nothing to do with the current disaster of American foreign policy, doesn’t live up to its predecessor.
Although radioactive lightning storms rage outside their underground shelter in Greenland 2, the survivors have been protected until scores of meteors rain down on the bunker and force everyone to flee once more. This time, the Garritys head for mainland Europe — specifically France, where the giant comet struck and created a massive crater that, in a comparatively short time, may have become a lush safe zone. The “science” here wavers between extremely speculative and patently ridiculous, and as good as the special effects and some of the action set pieces are, the dialogue is clichéd and the plot machinations are often incoherent. Sometimes, the journey is indeed the destination. In this case, it would be better to cancel the trip altogether.
Greenland 2: Migration is currently in theaters.
‘Primate’
Lack of coherence isn’t an issue with Primate, which knows exactly what it is and how to achieve its goals as a non-supernatural monster movie. If nothing else, Primate is a shoo-in to be the best rabid-chimp movie of 2026. The premise seems like fun. Imagine if Koko , the real-life, sign-language-communicating female gorilla, were a male chimpanzee, afflicted with rabies, and face-rippingly violent toward anyone he came across, even his beloved owners. In some ways, Primate apes (sorry) the hoary haunted-house format as a bunch of hormone-addled college-age kids are up to party at a secluded cliffside dwelling in Hawaii where, a renowned deaf zoologist and his two daughters live with Ben, the family’s very bright adopted chimpanzee.
With their father miles away at a book-signing for one of his tomes, the eldest daughter and her friends use the occasion to invite some randy boys to drop by for a little monkey business, so to speak — unaware that Ben has been infected. Soon, it becomes obvious that Ben can move at lightning speed and easily tear apart any and all of the hapless humans within the house before they make it to the front door. You can guess what sort of carnage might result, or you can go see director-coscreenwriter Johannes Roberts’s wild 90 minutes of hairy, scary lunacy. Roberts is a veteran of the horror genre who helmed one of the later Resident Evil movies and the 47 Meters Down shark-attack thrillers, and for what it is (a bestial take on the slasher genre), Primate works. It’s a nail-biter — the kind that generates laughter, sometimes of the nervous variety, as its outlandish beast-on-the-loose terrorizes the partyers. By the way, whoever played Ben deserves a lifetime supply of bananas. He’s chimp-tastic!
Primate is currently in theaters.
‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’
Speaking of horror, the fourth movie in the dread-generating U.K. sci-fi series that began in 2003 with 28 Days Later (directed by Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting renown) is here, and like the other installments, it’s a thinking person’s nightmare vision and a hell of a ride. Director Nia DaCosta (The Marvels, Candyman) is at the helm for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which picks up where 2025’s 28 Years Later left off and continues an examination of how the world is upended by the accidental release of a very contagious virus that induces rage and a hunger for flesh in the infected. Like 28 Days Later, both 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple were scripted by Alex Garland whose original concept was a redefinition of the zombie genre. Those who catch the rage virus can move quickly as they attack their victims, rather than just shambling along, making them much more formidable threats and jacking up the tension.
The biggest star of The Bone Temple is Ralph Fiennes, whose Royal Shakespeare Company bona fides, Oscar nominations, and Emmy and Golden Globe awards attest to his elevated stature, and he’s mesmerizing. As in 28 Years Later, Fiennes plays Dr. Kelson, a chemist who sleeps in a tunnel-laboratory beneath a fortress-like structure he constructed from human bones and skulls. Down in his hidey-hole, he dances to ’80s new wave music that he plays on an old turntable and develops a compound he hopes will counter the effects of the virus. To gauge the efficacy of the cure, Kelson needs to experiment on a carrier, but the spine-snapping, brain-eating brute he finds could turn on him. There’s also potential danger from an uninfected group of roving juveniles in the thrall of a murderously insane Satan-worshipping punk (Jack O’Connell). The aggressive splatter of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will be off-putting to some. That said, it’s appropriate to the story, which is a barn-burner — literally at one point.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is currently in theaters.