Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players.
When I saw that there was a movie called Bone Lake, I did immediately think that it was going to be a porn parody. Perhaps of Swan Lake? It’s not, of course, but that name is certainly sounds more like erotic thriller (in a crude way) than the horror movie it is. To be fair, it is equal parts horror and erotic thriller, so the name is doing double duty. “Bone” in this case is both the actual physical bones of victims as well as the more prurient use of the word as a verb. This fact is even lampshaded in the trailer.
What is interesting to me about Bone Lake initially is that the premise is one that is obvious. There’s a twist moment here that, if you don’t see it coming, you need to get off your phone and actually watch the movie. That first twist is followed by a second one that lands solidly. It’s not one that is necessary for the movie to work, but it comes as a surprise, and it genuinely does raise the film a bit in my estimation at least.
We open with a pair of naked people running through the woods, being pursued by someone with a crossbow, a la The Most Dangerous Game. This includes a shot of a crossbow bolt going through someone’s testicles, and honestly I needed a warning for that. Our two runners naturally end up dead, bolt through the goolies and everything, and our scene changes to our two protagonists, Diego and Sage (Marco Pigossi and Maddie Hasson).
Sage and Diego are on vacation, and have rented a massive house for just the two of them on the shore of Bone Lake. Sage is worried about the cost, and we’re going to eventually find out that she is the only income the two of them have. Diego has quit his job teaching at a junior college to make a go as a novelist. It’s also pretty clear that despite her trying to be supportive, Sage isn’t that sure of Diego’s skill.
It’s also clear pretty quickly that Diego is looking at this weekend in the house as a continual sex romp and that Sage isn’t really getting the satisfaction that he is from their sex life. And soon enough, their weekend plans are shattered with the arrival of two other people who have also evidently booked the house for the weekend. These are Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita), and thus ends the first act.
Our second act shows us the relationships in question. Will and Cin (Cin is short for Cinnamon, not Cindy), are overtly sexual, and seem to spend a lot of the weekend trying to split up Diego and Sage. This is despite the fact that Will discovers Diego is planning to propose to Sage. Will and Cin also convince the other two to break into three locked rooms at the end of the hall. One is essentially a sex dungeon and the other contains a Ouija board and press clippings about disappearances around the titular Bone Lake. Sage is upset by all of this and decides that they shouldn’t break into the third room. The sexual games continue, with Cin and Will overtly trying to split up Diego and Sage as well as gaslighting them into thinking the other is cheating. And thus ends the second act.
I’m clearly not going to go into the third act here, where we’ll get both the first, obvious, spoiler and the second, much better one. The first twist is, in fact, so obvious that you’ve probably already guessed it. The third act is where this genuinely turns into a horror movie, living up to the promise from the opening sequence. For a film that is mainly psychological, the final 20 minutes or so are surprisingly gruesome.
The truth is that I don’t mind a slow burn of a film. There are some great horror movies that don’t really kick off until the third act. In fact, that’s often the case with horror movies in general. Far be it from me to compare an erotic thriller with Friday the 13th movies, but in most of those films, the real killing spree doesn’t happen until we’re close to the end. The rest of it is build up, and the build up in Bone Lake works pretty well. This is a film that might contain one of the best depictions of gaslighting since, well, Gaslight.
It also helps that our people are smart. No one in this film is dumb, and that makes it far easier to understand what they are going through. Dumb people in bad situations aren’t that interesting. Smart people in bad situations often make dumb mistakes, and that’s interesting.
For me, the biggest issue with Bone Lake is the fact that this is a horror movie with clear connections to The Most Dangerous Game (both the movie and the original story), the body count is minimal. Aside from our two victims at the beginning of the film, there are only four people in the movie. At most, there are going to be three deaths, and that’s slim pickings for the genre.
Is it good? Yeah, it’s fine. Bone Lake isn’t a movie I’d want to watch with my kids (way too much sex) or my wife (way too much blood) and I probably won’t watch it again, but it was entertaining enough.
Why to watch Bone Lake: The twist works better than you think it will.
Why not to watch: For a horror movie, where’s the body count?
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