Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Directed by S. Craig Zahler
During a shootout in a saloon, Sheriff Hunt injures a suspicious stranger. The doctor's assistant, wife of the local foreman, tends to him in prison. That night, the town is attacked and they both disappear—only the arrow of a cannibal tribe is found. Hunt and a few of his men go in search of the prisoner and the foreman's wife.
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What critics say influenced Bone Tomahawk
The sudden, queasy lurch into horror isn’t entirely successful: it is as if Zahler has bolted The Hills Have Eyes on to the end of The Searchers.
Winking explicitly to “The Searchers” with its ostensibly classical tale of four mismatched frontiersmen out to rescue abducted townsfolk from the clutches of a savage (and emphatically fictitious) native tribe, “Bone Tomahawk” may seem over-indulgent at 132 minutes, yet it’s the wayward digressions of Zahler’s script — navigated with palpable enjoyment by an expert, Kurt Russell -led ensemble — that are most treasurable in a film that commits wholeheartedly to its own curiosity value.
A tense, absorbing pursuit Western that turns into a Grand Guignol gorefest, Bone Tomahawk is what you might get if you crossbred The Searchers with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or maybe Cannibal Holocaust.
Picture a modern version of The Searchers being written by Zahler while a series of Quentin Tarentino interviews are playing on low volume in the background.
Descriptions of this gorehound oater as “The Searchers” meets “The Hills Have Eyes” are all too accurate.
Bone Tomahawk is an exploitation western that references old classics such as Rio Bravo and The Searchers.
Bone Tomahawk is an exploitation western that references old classics such as Rio Bravo and The Searchers.
Not even Jenkins displays much of his usually reliable skill and personality as he instead takes an exaggerated stab at creating this film’s version of Rio Bravo‘s Stumpy (Walter Brennan).
It’s probably unfair to blame him as he also turned up in the equally brilliantly-cast Ravenous, and that film is a goddamn masterpiece, but if not Arquette then who?
Later this year Quentin Tarantino will follow up his "Django Unchained" with another Western, "The Hateful Eight", but his star Kurt Russell has saddled up for the equally violent and awesomely-titled " Bone Tomahawk ", which is also worth checking out despite a few pacing issues.
Bone Tomahawk is skittish about its racism, self-conscious in a manner reminiscent of Django Unchained.
Fox meanwhile seems content auditioning for the role of Calvin Candie in an off-Broadway production of Django Unchained.
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Bone Tomahawk is The Searchers mashed up with Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, for sure, but no one can accuse Zahler, who also scripted, of not stealing from the best.
The sudden, queasy lurch into horror isn’t entirely successful: it is as if Zahler has bolted The Hills Have Eyes on to the end of The Searchers.
The surprise is that “Bone Tomahawk,” while overlong and awfully leisurely (as well as remarkably gory in its latter stages), is quite enjoyable, rather like a version of “The Hills Have Eyes” transplanted to the old West and enriched by a strong cast and a good deal of flavorful, if often digressive, dialogue.
If you ever wondered what “The Hills Have Eyes” would look like remade in to a cheap C grade Western, look no further than “Bone Tomahawk.”
Descriptions of this gorehound oater as “The Searchers” meets “The Hills Have Eyes” are all too accurate.
“The Searchers meets The Hills Have Eyes,” is the simplest and most efficient way to describe the gruesome, brutal, and oddly compelling western / horror combo called Bone Tomahawk.
They’re bizarre, true savages, and the hints we get of their home life point towards something akin to The Hills Have Eyes.
Lansdale is an East Texas writer, known for his work in the splatterpunk, Western, and crime genres, whose stories have been adapted into the films Bubba Ho-Tep and Cold in July.
We spend the first act hanging out, Rio Grande–style, in a small settlement — I hesitate to call it a town — where most of the men have departed on a cattle drive.
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A tense, absorbing pursuit Western that turns into a Grand Guignol gorefest, Bone Tomahawk is what you might get if you crossbred The Searchers with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or maybe Cannibal Holocaust.
It also shares parallels with the Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men,” in which an old sheriff faces what feels like a new and inhuman menace.