Bone Tomahawk
(2015)
(SPOILERS) S
Craig Zahler’s movie debut, coming in the wake of numerous sold but unmade
screenplays, is a highly accomplished horror western, exhibiting the kind of
slow, steady unfolding, in full knowledge of a worth-the-wait climax, also
exhibited by the likes of Kevin Costner’s Open
Range. The major difference being, Open
Range doesn’t explode into a crimson fountain of limbs and entrails, while Bone Tomahawk wades in knee deep.
Not being a
gore hound, I take no great glee in the sight of an unfortunate deputy’s scalping,
having a block hammered into his mouth and then suffering the final indignity
of being split down the middle, but I suspect the horror fiend in Zahler took
unbridled relish in this dubious achievement. Elsewhere, there are numerous
dismemberments and a cathartic decapitation, as Russell’s Sheriff Hunt gets a
too-late opportunity for payback.
Perhaps
most wince-inducing, however, in terms of the protracted stress and strain, is
the arduous journey to the location where the town of Bright Hope’s abductees
are held captive, during which Patrick Wilson’s O’Dwyer, recuperating from a
fractured leg, further damages it with his every step after the posse’s horses
are stolen.
To be fair
to Zahler, he isn’t indiscriminate in his employment of viscera. Indeed, he’s
so measured and meticulous in building up suspense that he scarcely needs to
be. By the time we reach the unhallowed hallowed grounds of the cannibal
troglodytes (apparently it’s okay to depict Native Americans as mindless
savages, just as long as they’re barely recognisable mindless savages, more The Hills Have Eyes than Stagecoach) nerves are jangling
uncontrollably in anticipation of the terror awaiting our motley heroes (and to
be honest, I’m glad he didn’t opt for a realistic portrayal of how people would
likely react to the deputy’s death, since none of the characters would ever
have recovered their wits).
And they are
very much motley. Russell’s Sheriff Franklin Hunt wears the familiar whiskers
of Kurt in western mode (going back to Tombstone
two decades ago), and it doesn’t need saying he doesn’t disappoint. Only that, with
his current minor career resurgence, it would be nice if he doesn’t make a
habit of dying in all his new defining roles. As it is, it’s his co-stars who
rather steal the limelight, the odd line aside (“Well, you’re pretty angry for a guy named Buddy”).
There’s Wilson’s
O’Dwyer, desperate to rescue his abducted wife (Lili Simmons, best known for Banshee), so much so that he foolishly
heads off with a busted leg and spends three-quarters of the movie looking like
a liability who will certainly do for their slim chances of staging a
successful rescue. It’s one of Zahler’s great strengths as a writer that, in a
fairly simple plot, he veers from the expected in character fates. Okay, I was
expecting Russell to buy it, and Fox’s cocky sharpshooter Brooder was also unlikely
to see the final frame, but the turnaround of O’Dwyer, resourceful and resolute,
was still surprising, even when it dawned on me that’s where this was heading.
That said, it’s astonishingly considerate of the troglodytes to give their cave
a back way in, so he doesn’t have to hoist himself up a rock face.
Brooder: I’ve
killed more Indians than anyone else here put together.
The Professor: Well,
that’s an ugly boast.
Brooder: It
isn’t a boast, but a fact.
Fox is
terrific in a gift of a part, Brooder being parcelled out a procession of
self-assured and pithy one-liners, even to the point where he’s looking death
in the mouth (“I’m far too vain to ever
live as a cripple”), and given an amusing exchange (as above) with the
town’s knowledgeable Native American. And, while he maybe antagonistic and aloof,
Brooder surely loves his horse.
Richard
Jenkins as Chicory gives the talkative (and then some, particularly on the
subject of flea circuses and reading in the bath) old-timer a touching moral
code (“One of them was wearing a crucifix”
he protests of the bandits shot down by Brooder; “Then Jesus should have helped him” comes the reply). There’s also
good support from Simmons, and David Arquette as the throat-cutting,
grave-desecrating outlaw who starts all this.
As for the troglodytes,
they’re a fearsome bunch, possibly a little too acrobatic when it comes to
being flattened by bullets, but with arrestingly outlandish throat adornments/implants
that give them a unique (slightly Predator-esque)
method of communication (part of O’Dwyer’s rehabilitation into a hero comes
when he removes one and lures others to their doom with it).
Zahler has
made nothing short of a first rate B-movie here, one he elevates with fine,
memorable characterisations and a keen choice of cast. It will be interesting
to see which way the entirely exploitation-titled Brawl in Cell Block 99 takes him. What makes Bone Tomahawk so arresting is that it takes western characters and
throws them into a horror scenario; it may lack the subtext of a Deliverance or Southern Comfort, but it succeeds as a character piece long before
it’s overwhelmed in splatter. Can he do the same for the prison genre?
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.