Bone Tomahawk

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)

The genre of horror western is definitely a term that deserves further study from the point of view of filmmaking. In this one, the director and screenwriter S. Craig Zahler didn’t overthink things and came up with the simplest story there might be. He placed a tribe of cannibalistic Indians into the Wild West – nobody has ever heard of them at all – and he also put together a rescue party that will try to rescue a chick from the tennets of these disgusting savages. End of story. But what’s important is what’s happening in the film. For instance, in the first half of the film, barely anything happens. Only the atmosphere keeps slowly but intensely building up, presenting a version of the Wild West involving a wild tribe that emits inhumane shrieks like giant sperm whales in mating season. But once our rescue party meets the tribe in a close encounter, that’s when the real suspense starts, and every now and then you get a proper piece of gore, which I am not going to discuss here any further so that I wouldn’t spoil the fun for you. That’s actually the only reason why the film is worth seeing. Well that and also there’s Kurt Russell, who fits into the charcter of the sheriff perfectly. But what role doesn’t he fit into perfectly… (30/01/2017)

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 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)

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)