The Story: A small-town sherriff leads a posse into a desolate region to rescue people who were abducted by a cannibalistic indigenous clan.
I’m not terribly familiar with Western Horror novels or films. I imagine its about ghosts, coal mines, railroads, murder, and yes – cowboys and Indians. 2015’s Bone Tomahawk focuses on the later two elements of this sub-genre.
What I Liked: This is a star studded film and there’s some good acting all over the place. The films set itself up as Oregon trail meets The Hills Has Eyes. As our team of rescuers brace the elements they have to deal with thieves, infections, and their own mortality. Their quest is perilous, a death wish, and their journey is part of the psychological horror.
It starts promising and fulfills a bit of that promise in its third and final act. There’s some pretty gruesome scenes.
What I Don’t Like: This is definitely a creative and terrifying journey. However, the opposing forces of white saviors and native savages kind of leaves me disappointed. There was a missed opportunity here to use an Native-American (Zahn McClarnon) as part of the search party, seeing that he told the audience about our movie monsters and pointed them in the way. Imagine the level of conflict and story-telling that diversity would’ve forced out this narrative.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the film as it. I get why it focuses on this cowboy and Indians narrative. There’s even some moments where character confront each other for their own savagery and untrusting nature, but by the end those themes don’t really matter. It wastes characters that would have called to question who were the real savages. And that’s more psychologically terrifying than anything.
Not to mention that the single black character in the film gets killed early, but I should’ve seen that coming…
My Verdict: This is definitely a film worth watching, despite it’s shortcomings. The real horrifying things are towards the end (for fans of that kind of stuff), but the pace builds to that pay off. Bone Tomahawk is currently available on Amazon Prime with subscription.
Stay Ghoulish. Remember: as we near Halloween, stick around of an extra special treat from me to you.