"Bone Tomahawk" (2015) American Western Horror Film Directed and Written by S. Craig Zahler - Starring Kurt Russell

[DonRocks]

"Bone Tomahawk" is a 2015 Western "Horror" film - and I use that term in quotes - which was released late in the year. Its one attribute is Kurt Russell as Sheriff Franklin Hunt. How they got Kurt Russell to star in this film is beyond me, but they did. I wish there was something - anything - else about it that I could recommend to you, but it is pretty much 130 minutes of poorly crafted boredom - at least it's free on Amazon.com, but I can pretty much promise you that your time is worth more than investing 2+ hours of in this movie.

It's a very simple story - it was filmed on a $1.8 million budget, yet brought in only $232,000 at the box office - how many box-office losers have you seen that cost less than $2 million to make? Yeah, it's *that* level of movie.

The horseback-riding scenes - and there are a lot of them - through the prairie are visually nice to watch, and for me, that was the highlight of the film. I wasn't at all invested in the characters, or the plot, and I didn't really understand (or care to understand) what exactly the hell was going on. Well, I guess I *did* know what was going on, but it was so simplistic that there really wasn't anything to "get."

I feel the same way about having spent 2+ hours of my life watching this film as I do when I eat at a terrible restaurant: like I wasted precious moments, and the only possible good I can get out of it is to warn you away. You might not hate it as much as I do (honestly, I still have almost 30 minutes left as I write this), but I urge you to move on from this - it's really amateurish.

I'd love to hear a differing opinion, or something from someone who knows about this movie - why did they make it? What was the point? Billing this as a "horror" Western is a bit much - it's not a horror film; there's a group of antagonists for sure, and there are times when it can get suspenseful, but horror it is not - I think that's a misbilling.

Making this film could have only possibly hurt Kurt Russell's career - he must have owed a friend a favor or something.

You know between the first five seasons of "The Walking Dead," "The Babadook," and "Hush," I'd recently seen three winners that were released straight to streaming-video companies (I don't know if AMC constitutes this or not, but you get my point). "Bone Tomahawk" made me realize just how lucky I've been up until now, and that I cannot randomly throw a dart, expecting to get quality fare from this point forward. I'll be doing quite a bit more research in the future, and not just happily assuming things will be worth my time.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a small role played by the legendary Sean Young (*):

Sep 29, 2014 - "Sean Young, David Arquette, Lili Simmons and More Join 'Bone Tomahawk'; Film Now Shooting" by Evan Dickson on collider.com

(*) Admit it, sometimes you can never quite tell whether or not I'm serious.