Bone Tomahawk

A mix of proper western atmosphere (the sounds of the prairie, the small town, the sets) with an uncompromising carnage that is so explicit you see it in mainstream films only every 5 years or so (last time in The Hills Have Eyes 2), because it goes far beyond the normal. S. Craig Zahler focuses mostly on the characters, their symbiosis with the wildlife and their interaction with each other. The script is utterly unpredictable until just before the finale, when it turns out to be a slaughter. Cut or speed up the first half, stretch out the second half and it would probably be a bit more entertaining. (24/04/2016)

I think that, when it comes to film quality, there has never been a better horror movie with aboriginal cannibals. A week ago I complained that in Roth's Green Inferno hardly anything happens for half of the film. Here, the proportion between “introduction” and “action” is even more sober, but it doesn’t matter at all when you can see the difference in talent between Roth and the first-time director S. Craig Zahler. Ninety minutes are dedicated to introducing characters stubbornly determined to rescue the abducted inhabitants of a village. That’s enough time to sincerely start rooting for them, which also helped by the superb performances. The extremely brutal final half-hour then feels like a sucker punch, because the tribe of cannibals don’t fool around. It is very clear for everyone that these nice characters have walked into a place where they should have never been at all. I never imagined that the horror genre could blend so smoothly with the western. But Bone Tomahawk is both a really good western and really good horror. Very close to perfection. (25/10/2015)

Dialogue as if from a contemporary Manhattan conversational movie, theatrical performances, an atmosphere that is anything but western, amateurish cinematographic work with space and, in the end, a hole in the logic that makes it look like the filmmakers are mocking their audience. Bone Tomahawk reminded me of some festival bizarreness from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival awarded the Ecumenical Jury prize. But I watched it to the end, because to see such cruel and brutal scenes in a western with a cast of A-listers is even rarer than the painfully bad direction. (30/11/2016)

A slow journey movie with excellently played characters. Kurt Russel was just made for this western, Fox is a convincing as the arrogant bastard and Wilson is a regular guy with a wife holed up in a cave full of Indian cannibals. The action is swift and when the action eventually comes toward the ending, it’s naturalistic and good and bloody. The butchery in the cave is unarguably the zenith of the movie. (08/12/2015)

A garbage story filmed at a meandering, and therefore boring, pace that doesn't bother with logic and heads towards a dumb ending. The brutal opening and the first 20 minutes or so look very promising and seem to set up an atmospheric, gritty film that deviates from established norms. However, from the robbery and kidnapping in the deserted town onwards, it starts losing its grip and relentlessly gets worse and worse. The peculiar anachronistic dialogues are more of a nuisance as if Zahler was lightly inspired by Tarantino. The biggest mystery to me is why I still gave it two stars when I genuinely suffered in the second half. Maybe I was influenced by those enthusiastic comments and high ratings from my favorites. Well, we'll meet again and when I remove it from my memory slowly and painfully, they will explain to me what the cleverness and entertainment of the film consisted of. Overall impression: 30%. I remember a cannibal western that, in my opinion, reliably outperformed Zahler. That film was Ravenous from 1999, even though Bird wasn't a leading directorial figure. (05/04/2021)