My Review of the Movie 'Bone Tomahawk'

I heard some great reviews of Bone Tomahawk back in the day. Those reviews were years ago and I had put the movie on my watch list on Netflix a while back. I totally forgot about the movie until recently. My girlfriend and I didn't really have anything to watch and I noticed on Netflix. It was categorized as a horror movie but it looked like a western.

My girlfriend really likes horror movies and I like western movies so I thought that it was a good idea to check the movie out finally despite not really knowing too much about the movie.

This movie is about this mysterious nomadic group of aboriginals. Natives don't associate themselves with this group because this group is just crazy and they're scared of them. Two thieves come to the nomadic groups' grave area and desecrate it. The nomads kill one of them and miraculously one of them escapes. This idiot thief comes to a small town with the nomads on his trail and because of this the deputy sheriff, the thief and the town's doctor get kidnapped. Now it's up to the sheriff, the doctor's husband, a racist gunman, and the stand-in deputy sheriff to come rescue them.

Although this movie was categorized as a horror movie, I don't think that this movie qualifies as a horror movie. I would say it could be categorized as a thriller but only at the end of the movie. Most of the movie is character driven and how they develop relationships with each other. Each of the characters have strong characteristics and they contrast each other quite well. The problem is that categorizing this movie is very difficult. It may mislead people as to how the movie will play out.

This movie is somewhat long and drawn out purposefully. As I mentioned before, it's based on character development and how each of the characters build bonds with one another. This isn't for everyone. It can seem quite long and boring to some but there are some crazy scenes at the end. In fact, I think the end sequence contrasts the first half of the movie so much that it makes the events seem even more shocking because the audience is already in a false sense of security thinking the movie will go a certain way. I really like that about the movie but oh my gosh some of the scenes are extremely gross and disgusting.

You get a general idea of how each of the characters will react at the end. Some of the scenes were somewhat predictable but it was still satisfying. I was rooting for certain characters and it was fun because they all had that old school honor that you don't really see in movie nowadays. It's fun to see chivalrous values in characters. It changes the dynamics of how you would expect they interact with one another. Disputes between characters is pretty funny because they'd apologize to one another at the end. You don't really see manners like this in movies nowadays or even in real life. It was a welcome change of pace.

Overall, I enjoyed the last half of Bone Tomahawk. At the time when I was watching it I did feel bored but when I think back about the movie I recognize why they did what they did. Due to the fact that I got bored I know a lot of people may not even finish the movie. Unfortunately, for this reason, I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. Thematically, it's kind of all over the place. Drama lovers won't like the end because it's more of a thriller/horror movie and thriller/horror lovers won't like the movie because there's too much drama in the beginning of the movie. It's not a terrible movie. I think if you keep an open mind about the movie, you can genuinely enjoy this movie but you have to just go with it and watch it through to the end.