Bone Tomahawk (2015)

I love westerns as well as horror. Come to find out that they made a star studded horror western...I about wet myself! Was it good? HELL YEA! It's your basic cannibal movie set in the wild west. It is not as graphic as movies such as: Cannibal Holocaust or The Green Inferno. However they tell a good story here and you definitely get your share of nastiness as well.

Here is the IMDB synopsis: "Four men set out in the Wild West to rescue a group of captives from cannibalistic cave dwellers." Yea that's a very short synopsis and frankly I love it! It's simple, and done right!

The Grade: A (Great acting, setting, tension, and violence was quite fast and sudden)

The Good:

Where to start? How about the cast! Good lord it was full of people I like! Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring, Insidious), Kurt Russell (The Thing, Death Proof), Matthew Fox (Lost), Richard Jenkins (Cabin in the Woods), David Arquette (Scream), and Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses). This movie was packed with actors! They all played their part to perfection. None of them stole the screen. This was just so cool to see all these people together. I loved the setting. It's very isolated. It's the wild west, and it's not fun. People get sick, you have to fear animals etc... The movie made me feel both the isolation as well as the fears of the society. It's hard living. Also to go along with the setting they did a particularly good job with the dialogue and/or language. It's not quite Tarantino dialogue, but it felt very authentic. There's a scene where the sheriff is interrogating a man, and it's just really cool from a language perspective. I personally love the pacing. Although I've seen some complaints about it being "too slow." You are damn right it's slow! You get to know the characters. You get to let yourself get sucked into the setting. My living room fades away slowly and I'm there with them on their desperate rescue mission. It is basically your typical western pace frankly. Also, I really liked the violence in this movie. The way that it was shot. When an attack would happen it was so fast! It was scary in that regard because much like real life you have but a second to respond to a threat. At one point there is some gore and it's done quite well without being gratuitous.

The Bad:

Not much to say. I think it's a little hard to believe that someone with a broken leg could make the journey in the movie, but I can overlook that. While I complimented the language/dialogue in "The Good" section, I also wonder if folks truly spoke like that. Some of the vocabulary was quite advanced. I just don't know where they are learning terms like "manifest destiny" etc. Again, I can overlook that. The end credit song kind of took me out of the general feeling I had at the end of the movie. Luckily this is just end credits and I already felt everything I needed to feel for the movie.

The Ugly:

There's some racism in the movie, but quite frankly it comes off as natural for the times. There's some torture, but it serves the story that they are telling. It's a tribe that is cannibalistic so it is reasonable to expect some gore.

In Conclusion:

This movie was terrific! The star studded cast was great and really made this movie a treat for me to watch. I would not say the movie is "scary" however it was full of tension. The tribe that they are facing is very stealthy and fast. The violence comes out of nowhere and you kind of jump. If you like westerns and horror then watch this movie right freaking now! I'd also like to comment that this movie is more of a western than it is a horror movie. I think this is why I enjoyed it so much. They don't focus on trying to tell a "horror story." This frees them to tell the story as it should be told instead of focusing on a particular demographic.

#Western #Cannibal