OMM2024 - Night 29: Bone Tomahawk (2015)

#OctoberMovieMarathon

Night 29:

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

8/10

It's the wild west in the town of Bright Hope. When 3 people are abducted by a strange cannibalistic group, the sheriff and his posse ride out to rescue them.

One of the big joys of this movie is the mood. The tone is set right at the start and it's solid all the way through. From the lighting and scenery to the costumes and mannerisms, it's fantastic. The characters are also great. Sometimes with movies that don't feature a lot of dialogue or exposition dumps can get confusing or let the characters blend together. But not our main 4 guys. They stay distinct and we really get to know them as we travel to the scene of the final climax. Kurt Russel and all our leading men are fantastic in this.

 

It's a bit on the gorey side for me- but thankfully we don't linger on visuals and rely on some effective (granted very disturbing) sound design. As good as the movie is, it is a bit long at over 2 hours. I feel like someone could very easily rate this a 9/10, but it just didn't hit that special something to push it above 8 for me.

SPOILERS START BELOW THE POSTER!

SPOILERS START HERE!

Surprisingly, I don't have much of an issue with the women in this movie. There aren't that many women in the story, but none of them are treated as simple props or emotional crutches. And then the fact that the story focuses mostly on the men doesn't feel like the women are unfairly sidelined. The only exception to this are the two female Troglodytes at the end, which just felt like an unnecessary gross out/"look how horrible these people are" moment. I mean we already got to see them chop a man in half penis first- did we really need to see two women in that state? Unneeded. And then we just... leave them? *shudders*

Other than that though, this movie was good. There's a bit of a reverse "Misery" scene (this one has a great use of sound and a cutaway), humanity for the jerk character, some excellent physicality expressing the physical pain the characters are in, and it's just good. If you like the wild west, but enjoy it being a bit more grounded and more serious- this is the movie for you.