Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Directed by S. Craig Zahler
Sometimes two movie genres that are wildly different get fused together in an interesting combo. I guess I’ve never really thought about mixing Western and Horror together, but it is an interesting idea. Bone Tomahawk does just that, and is the result effective? Well, lets take a look.
I was told a couple times by a buddy of mine to check this out, he has a good mind for horror so I value his opinion. This recently popped up on Amazon Prime Video so I gave it a go. The movie runs over 2 hours which is kind of surprising for a horror movie. I have to say that the 2 hour run time, was definitely 2 hours. I feel like they could’ve lopped off about 20 minutes of this and it would have been more effective.
Bone Tomahawk is about a rescue mission of a Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell), a backup deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), local man John Brooder (Matthew Fox) and foreman Arthur (Patrick Wilson). The group is trying to retrieve Arthur’s wife, the doctor from a group of cannibalistic cave dwelling natives in the west. The mission is literally hobbled by Arthur’s previously broken leg, he trudges on but ultimately slows the team down. Arthur’s leg becomes too bad to travel longer so they reset the bone and knock him out. The remaining members of the team are attacked and captured by the natives. John is killed by a cannibal and Hunt and Chicory are dragged into a cave. Once in the cave they see Arthur’s wife is in a cage, alive. Nick, Hunt’s actual deputy appears with the tribe. They force him to talk to the other captives then they scalp him and bisect him in front of Hunt and Chicory. Arthur soon awakens and continues on, broken leg and all. He is attacked by the tribe and kills two of them. He dislodges a whistle type thing from the windpipe of one of the tribesman. He blows into and others come, he kills them as well. Hunt tricks the cannibals into drinking some opium tincture, which kills one and knocks out two others. Later Hunt is dragged from his cage and cut open, they push a hot metal flask into the cut and begin shooting him with a rifle. Arthur blows the whistle which causes the cannibals to come after him. He kills them as well, Hunt is able to kill the lone member of the tribe with a bone axe. Hunt stays back to kill the others while Arthur, his wife and Chicory leave.
The gore in this movie is crazy. It takes a long time to get to anything good but once it does, you won’t be disappointed. The cannibals are brutal in their tactics, especially the bisection of Nick. They hold him up by his legs and ax at his crotch until his pelvis splits and his organs fall out. It was brutal to say the least and I actually had to look away. When hunt cuts the head off the native at the end that was rather gory as well. The way they show the violence close up is great. The camera work all around is good, you get some good shots of the environment they’re in, a large sprawling wasteland of a desert in the American southwest.
The acting is great. I can’t even think of one bad actor in this movie. Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins are as great as they always are. Matthew Fox put in a good performance as John Brooder, he was somewhat of an anti hero, a guy that is there for a good purpose but he’s kind of a dick. There are two drifters that start the movie, they’re played by David Arquette and Sid Haig, those two are great in their roles as thieves and murderers. Arthur’s wife Samantha is played by Lili Simmons, she’s gorgeous and does a great job as well. There’s a sex scene with Arthur in Samantha in the beginning, and you get some nice partial shots of her boobs haha. If I had to choose the best performance of the movie, I’d have to go with Kurt Russell, he’s so good at playing a badass.
Bone Tomahawk does a good job of merging two different genres together. My only beef is that there is way too much down time in the middle. You don’t even seen the cannibal tribe until the last half hour. Surprisingly this movie didn’t get much notoriety at the time, and only with the hardcore fans of the genre. The acting is great the gore is intense and when the climax comes it is gut wrenching. If this movie was 20 minutes shorter, I would like it a lot more. I would give this a solid B, again I wish the pacing was a little bit quicker.
