Ok, let me get this out of the way. Tombstone > Unforgiven. Bone Tomahawk > Hateful Eight. Good. Let's move forward.
I first discovered Bone Tomahawk on demand sometime last year, and I had heard a little critical acclaim about it but didn't know anyone who had seen it (other than a few hardcores in Mayberry) so I didn't think much of it. I decided to check it out, and boy was I pleased. Without a doubt this is one of the best westerns post-2000. I can't think of many others this solid since then other than True Grit's remake, Appaloosa, The Assassination......, No Country, and Django. I worked at a movie theater when Open Range came out, and it was so slow in parts especially after the big shootout. I remember it dragged on, and didn't want to watch it again. But then came Bone Tomahawk, and damn did it deliver.
For a movie with so little budget and a very limited release, you have to wonder what they were going for when they made this. It didn't make much money at all, probably thanks to its incredibly small release, and made a bit over an eighth of its budget back from the box. Sure, it's not about the money, and it's about the art. I'm glad they arted this together. Not a word, I know.
The pace would be expectedly offputting to some, as you can almost clock the first half of the movie to what happens. In the first half hour, we've met the characters and know there's something scary out there that just killed a stableboy. At 45 minutes, they've just struck out to go after those bad things. At one hour, the heroes (or whatever we want to call them) have their first major challenge, losing their rides and hoof it from there on out. At 1:15, the wounded man is left behind. At 1:30, the first hero dies. A few minutes later, we have The Scene. Awesome and brutal. At 1:45 we have the wounded man striking back. At 2:00 we have the final sacrifice. It's almost clockwork how a major plot point happens every 15 minutes. I skipped through the movie just now to make sure I had that right, and I did.
It struck me as such an effective piece of filmmaking that they made this a horror movie without using basically any of the horror tropes out there. There aren't jumpscares, there aren't pointless deaths, there's just enough blood and gore to leave the desensitized audience satisfied, and the music is perfectly fitting in that it's barely present. The distinct lack of ominous/leading music used so often in horror movies to signify a scary thing is about to happen is such a relief. We didn't have the da da dadada DUN thing in every horror movie ever. In fact, for this kind of movie, I think the lack of a score that you heard in every part of every scene was a smart idea. The silence was deafening at times. Sure, we needed the sad frontier-esque music here and there, but for instance when they were trapped in the cave, we didn't hear much of anything. It was beautiful.
The sound did bother me in another way, however, in that some effects were dubbed too loud or overmiced. For instance, when punches were thrown/landed, there was an exaggerated sound. Gunshots were insanely loud, which I am ok with, but thuds, plops and slams were almost all too loud. I don't know if it was for a realism effect or because this movie didn't have an enormous budget. Either way, I noticed. During The Scene, both the sounds of the hacking as well as the sound of the plops were amplified, perhaps to reinforce the fear factor.
I also did not recognize Richard Jenkins as Chicory. He was fantastic, easily the glue or the foundation or whatever you want to call him. Maybe the moral center. We had Brooder, the gun for hire/man with no fear. We had Hunt, the righteous and good sheriff. We had O'Dwyer, the family guy with a bum leg. Chicory was the one that kept them all together and alive, I believe. Either way, three of the men were objectively good men, and the fourth was the "whatever it takes" guy. I enjoyed their dynamic together, especially when Brooder shot those men in the dark and Chicory was chiding him for killing them.
Where did the dynamite go? It was so important for a few minutes, and then never spoken of again. It would have been the perfect way to wrap things up, by blowing up the cave and bringing the walls down on the remaining tribals. I was disappointed when Brooder died and that was it, no more dynamite.
Like others before me, I was also put off when O'Dwyer cut the throat out of the tribal/troglodyte to make the whistle. I thought he said the word "jewelry" so maybe it was a family jewel that was taken and he somehow found it. Much to our surprise, it was just the windpipe that acted as a perfect lure for the remaining tribals.
I keep using the word "tribal" to describe the villains because they significantly remind me of the villainous White Legs tribals in the game Fallout New Vegas, which is another cannibalistic and somewhat crazed group of tribesmen that paint themselves white and kill for the sake of killing, and they are led by a maniac chief wearing a mandible named Salt-Upon-Wounds.
Anyway, fantastic western horror. Loved watching it again even though I saw it last year. Just as thrilling as before. 8.5/10. War Kurt Russell.
