For a film that shows up this quietly on VOD after a limited theater release, Bone Tomahawk is much better than it has any right to be. Twenty years ago, the same film would have been advertised extensively before dominating the box office for a week or two—maybe more depending on the competition. There’s a scene so shocking, people would have talked about it the way they talked about the big reveal in The Crying Game or the leg-cross in Basic Instinct. Nothing about its quality suggests it was made by a first-time director, either.
A couple of outlaws, played by Sig Haig and David Arquette, stumble onto the sacred burial ground of the “trogdolytes,” a small sect of inbred cannibals. The trogdolytes promptly kill Haig as Arquette flees to a nearby town. Samantha (Lili Simmons) is recruited to operate on the outlaw’s injured leg while her husband, Arthur (Patrick Wilson), stays at home recuperating from a leg injury of his own. The following morning, the sheriff (Kurt Russell) discovers the outlaw, Samantha, and even the deputy have been kidnapped in the middle of the night. The sheriff gathers a search party and sets out to find the cannibals’ cavern. It’s in the agoraphobic expanses of the wild west that this group stumbles into horror movie territory.
I can probably count the number of movies that legitimately unsettled me on one hand. Bone Tomahawk is one of them. A lot of horror films coddle the audience to the point that even a child can reliably predict who’ll be left standing by the end. No one’s safe in this film. When the hero starts out with a bum leg, you already know it’s not the kind of story in which differences can be solved by a routine shootout.
That shocking scene I mentioned earlier is something so sick and jarringly twisted, Bone Tomahawk will likely spread through word of mouth until it’s a household name. I just can’t imagine a movie this incendiary can come and go so quietly. See it today and recommend it to everyone you know so that it can obtain its cult status sooner rather than later.
The Goug' Blog 