Bone Lake wants to play a game with the viewer. It’s one a lot of horror and art house buffs will be familiar with, and they’ll likely catch onto the rules (and cinematic influences) well before everything is laid out on the table and revealed to the film’s protagonists. It doesn’t mean that the game isn’t ghoulishly devious or any less impactful, but rather that Bone Lake operates with a certain degree of familiarity. In the hands of capable filmmaker Mercedes Bryce Morgan, this sex and blood drenched mania lands with assured impact and a lot of confidence. Expect a lot of entertaining discomfort, but also don’t expect a full reinvention of the genre, either.
Editor/journalist Sage (Maddie Hasson) and her struggling writer boyfriend Diego (Marco Pigossi) are on their way to a vacation rental mansion out at Bone Lake (so named because there’s, like, bones in the lake, and stuff). Sage is worried that they can’t afford such extravagance (as she’s the sole wage earner at the moment), but Diego is planning to propose this weekend and wants to go all out. Those plans hit a snag with the arrival of Cin (Andra Nechita) and Will (Alex Roe), a younger couple who has also apparently booked the same property for the weekend. Unable to reach the owners to sort things out, the couples agree to share the property the best they can. Things go okay at first, but one of the couples isn’t being honest about their reasons for being at the property.
And that dodgy plot description brings us to about the half hour point of the movie. Bone Lake isn’t dragging out a lot of its big reveals, but the script from writer Joshua Friedlander always keeps a little something extra in the tank for later. Morgan doesn’t waste a nanosecond letting the viewer know that things are going to get extra gnarly at some point (jumping off with a bit of shock horror that isn’t quite matched in the rest of the film), before settling into a lengthy, but nonetheless menacing depiction of one couple falling out with each other as the other duo tries to make them commit acts of infidelity. The chemistry between the four leads and the depiction of their “conscious uncoupling” bristles with the kind of tension not seen since the erotic thriller heyday of the 90s, and I mean that as a compliment. (There’s an alternate timeline where Roe’s character in particular would’ve been played by a young Mickey Rourke and Pigossi’s by James Spader, and I mean that with full sincerity.) Bone Lake isn’t afraid of sex or violence, and it throws more than enough of both at the audience.
It also isn’t afraid of some obviously campy foreshadowing. There are mysterious locked doors, clues as to what might be going on, and conveniently placed props and and plot points aplenty. Bone Lake makes frequent references to chess, but it’s more like an extended game of sexual chicken, meaning the endgame isn’t all that complicated to unravel, and almost everyone watching will be able to figure most of this out before the characters. Bone Lake does a good job of depicting a couple going through a rough patch, but it still requires a healthy suspension of disbelief for the plot to work. (If you question for a second why Sage and Diego stick around, Bone Lake is emphatically not the movie for you.) Bone Lake requires the characters to make silly mistakes (both the heroes and the villains) or else there wouldn’t be a movie.
But the performances and overall atmosphere are always on point, making Bone Lake the kind of slasher silliness that goes down relatively easy for those predisposed to liking such things. The climactic showdown is where Morgan’s directorial chops really explode to vibrant, gory life. The final stages of Bone Lake pay off the slow burning depiction of some hapless rubes struggling to free themselves of a spider’s web with a degree of massive overkill that makes the whole thing worthwhile. It also ends with a pitch perfect punchline that serves the film’s themes brilliantly. Overall, if you’re a horror buff, this is a quick little trip worth taking.
Bone Lake is now playing in theatres everywhere.
