Bone Tomahawk isn’t for the faint-hearted: it’s a brutal and bloody western described by Empire’s resident horror expert Kim Newman as “exceptionally gruesome”. Think Unforgiven meets The Hills Have Eyes with an engaging cast and some genuinely horrific violence.
The film stars Kurt Russell as Patrick Wilson, a grizzled sheriff who sets out to save three people who have been abducted by bloodthirsty, violent clan members – and while it’s often borderline unwatchable, it’s also very funny in places. It’s a very odd movie – that’s nonetheless one of the best Netflix movies – a genre-bending blend of western, horror and comedy.
Is Bone Tomahawk worth streaming?
Empire says yes: “this is as much a comedy as a cowboy horror film. Jenkins’s free-associating mutterings are inspired and fanciful, and feisty heroine (Lili Simmons) has a terrific speech about how the real peril of life in the Wild West isn’t ‘Indians’ or the weather ‘but the idiots’. Its influences veer all over the map, with stretches recalling the Coen brothers punctuated by echoes of Rob Zombie”.
It’s “a sci-fi horror cannibal exploitation picture by way of John Ford, it’s a deliberately paced, old-fashioned Western that occasionally morphs into a splatter movie,” says Movie Mezzanine. Meanwhile, CinemaDope says it’s “part revisionist oater, part Hills Have Eyes splatter-fest … a tightly constructed trek into enemy territory that becomes increasingly tough to stomach, or shake off”.
“A few stumbles aside this is best campfire movie for some time,” says Total Film, while The Irish Times says that “ultra-violence aside, there’s plenty to admire about this innovative genre-bender”. The Observer says it’s “a radical fusion of disparate elements which all enhance one another beautifully,” while Time Out says it’s “Equal parts charming, strange, goofy, unpredictable and genuinely horrifying.”
