2015
Writer/Director: S. Craig Zahler
Reading the feverish feedback on American blogs and reviews about Bone Tomahawk, I couldn’t help getting really excited about it. The whole concept sounded genuinely intriguing – a Classical-style frontier Western mixed with a full-on cannibal horror film. The Searchers meets Cannibal Holocaust. Extremely different to anything I had seen recently. I couldn’t wait to see it.
I’m glad to say it did live up to expectations. I am a big fan of Bone Tomahawk – bold, brutal and gloriously violent, it was an immensely engrossing and unusual experience, one which gripped my body as well as my attention and left me exhausted but thrilled.
In the sleepy town of Bright Hope, a violent drifter (David Arquette) on the run is captured by Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) and his loyal deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins, who I genuinely didn’t recognise, he’s wonderful in this). With the drifter injured, they call on the local nurse Samantha (Lili Simmons) to treat his wounds. But when the townsfolk are asleep, a tribe of savage cannibals kidnaps them both and rides off into the Badlands. Sheriff Hunt leads a ragtag band out to bring them back, including the aged and slightly senile Chicory, the suave and hot-headed John Brooder (Matthew Fox), and Samantha’s headstrong husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson), despite him having a severely broken leg.
From the very first shot, the film makes clear where its interests lie. An extended shot looking directly down and upside-down upon a sleeping man in the desert before he’s graphically killed, this is a film very much obsessed with quirk and detail, and fascinated with the boundedness of the human body. It also showcases the steady, unfussy shooting style, and the film’s impressive use of sound – here worsening the impact of the killing with the sheer emphasis on the sound of flesh tearing, bone being severed and blood bubbling.
It’s also a film which isn’t the least bit afraid to take its time. At 132 minutes, it’s long. Definitely far too long, considering the sparseness of the plot and the general unfussiness of the B-movies which Bone Tomahawk takes as inspiration. But in most scenes, the film’s patient focus on letting scenarios and conversations play out in full to go in unusual directions creates an offbeat aspect to the film which is unexpected and quite refreshing. The film embraces the witticisms of the period dialogue, and finds time amongst the wanderings and bloodshed to indulge wholeheartedly in conversations about flea circuses and etiquette. An early scene between Hunt and Chicory often pauses their exposition so they can discuss the bowl of soup they’re sharing. Another scene shows Samantha asking Arthur to read a love letter he once wrote to her, he dismissing the idea before she is called off to treat a patient. We would assume the scene would end there, but Arthur is shown retrieving the letter and reading it to himself in full, which goes on for about 2-3 minutes. It is this unusual approach that give the film an eccentric flavour, and offers space for the characters to develop before the adventurous aspects of the story start. By the time the search party has set off, we’ve learnt plenty about their characters and interactions, something which makes the potentially drab scenes of travelling more compelling.
This inward focus on character reflects itself in other ways in the steady shooting style. The camera often gazes intensely on the four adventurers, often at the expense of the vast scenery around them. Brooder repeatedly uses a bespoke telescope he calls The German, and he offers us tantalising glimpses of what he’s seeing through his descriptions. But the camera never shows us his view, never cuts away from the concerned faces of his companions. Landscape shots are surprisingly absent in the film, although this is no great loss, firstly to avoid distraction from the smaller conflicts of the group, and secondly because the cinematography is actually quite flat, especially when you consider just how sublime and awe-inspiring the rugged views of The Revenant and The Hateful Eight looked. Although, saying that, the sparseness of this bland scenery can add to the perception of unerring death hanging over the land, a place where things can’t grow and thrive.
It’s very much a film of three parts – the patient opening in the town where we are gradually bathed in their world; the extended travelling scenes in the middle; and then the complete tonal shift of the final third, when they reach the savage tribe territory. This sudden leap into the dead zone is abrupt and quite jarring – the tension ratchets up considerably and the eventual reveal of the troglodytes themselves is so unusual, both in their wicked appearance and their monstrous voices, that it becomes almost fantastical. But for me, that made it only more chilling. The rescuers have truly entered hell, and all they thought they knew, all they had prepared for, is viciously crushed underfoot.
This shift also ups the ante on violence, with some truly inventive and mind-scarring gore. I know the extreme violence has put off and upset some of those who were engaged with the more traditional earlier scenes. The shift in tone comes like a blow to the face. But frankly, I loved it; it gives a wonderful revisionist take on the Classic western tropes. The build-up and near-silence around these scenes builds a rigid tension which left me twitchy and shaky with anticipation. I always admire when films provoke physical responses. Not necessarily along the lines of Linda Williams’s views on body genre, films like melodrama or porn which are designed to provoke emotion or arousal, but more like what the best horror films can do – ones that make your body tense completely, or transmutes the pain characters fell onto your own body so you shift uncomfortably in your seat.
Also like the best horror films, at heart Bone Tomahawk does have a thematic focus. Much is made here on questions of race, about racist and uninformed folks realising that perceptions of civilisation vs. savagery doesn’t run along racial lines. In the end, I found Bone Tomahawk to be a genuinely distinct and thrilling experience, and unforgettable in its own way. What stands out is just how extremely odd this film is, surprisingly funny, and wonderfully immersive with some rich production design. I’m a big fan.
Musings from a Darkened Room 