Macabre...ish Horror Review: Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk, 2015/ 132 min.

Two drifters in the late 1800s, make their living by robbing and killing people. One is killed, when they desecrated a burial ground, the other makes it to town and hides behind an alias and in jail while they nurse his wounds. The sheriff found evidence of his grizzly activities, just outside of town.

One night, a stable boy is killed, horses are gone and the jail is empty, the only thing left behind is an arrow belonging to a known cannibal clan. These savages are said to reside in the Valley of the Starving Men. A posse is gathered and the men are off to find their kidnapped citizens and prisoner.

They are ambushed by raiders and robbed of their horses. In spite of that the surviving members of the posse find the clan or rather, are found by them and are waylaid and captured. They are caged with the remaining towns people who haven’t been eaten. Only to witness the scalping, bisection and slaughter of one of them.

What follows is more killing and gory, over the top killing of a posse member in retribution for the deaths of several of their clan. Also, most disturbing, to me, was the state of the cannibal clan’s women. Absolutely, horrific.

This movie feels like a run of the mill western except it has Sid Haig, David Arquette, Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson and so many others in it. And the killing is very graphic and gory but there’s only some at the beginning and end. It was long periods of nothing, then torture porn. And it was a long wait. But when something happened, it was graphic and gory, the physical effects are great but the movie is not scary or even creepy. It’s a western, with a lot of camping and some grue.