Review of Bone Tomahawk (2015) by Mike_M — 01 Nov 2015
The movie is admirable for being an indie production, especially a Western/horror with an unusual sub-genre (a lost tribe of 'people').
That said, I don't know what the director was trying to do, and I think it's bad regardless. Was he trying to make pulpy, tongue-in-cheek fare? It fails at the sort of humorous winks that would make that work.
Was he trying to play it gritty and straight-ahead? It's ham-fisted.
Was he trying for a weird mix of these two things? ...probably, but that isn't what jars me.
What jars me is that every element in the movie is a mix of sometimes good, sometimes competently shrug-able, and sometimes incompetent. I will say that the lighting is generally good (with some conspicuously forced lighting here and there), and that the flat characterization is acceptable in a film of this genre.
BUT, the story logic, the dialogue, the acting, the shot/edit/sequence decisions, the sound design-- they're often sub-par or terrible. If these were all good to great, the weird tone of the picture wouldn't.
Bother me. As it is, the tone is just another semi-competent choice at best.
I believe that the fan support for the film exists because the fans of the genre are starved for content. For this, and for executing an indie Western at all for $1.8M, I will give the director credit. But on its own merits, this is not a good or even fully competent movie.
This review of Bone Tomahawk (2015) was written by Mike_M on 01 Nov 2015.
Bone Tomahawk has generally received positive reviews.
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