TV Recap: THE WALKING DEAD Season 6, Episode 3, “Thank You”

Shock Till You Drop

TV Recap: THE WALKING DEAD Season 6, Episode 3, “Thank You”

SHOCK is in shock after the death of a major THE WALKING DEAD character.

After the ballistic blood orgy that marked last week’s peripheral cast-culling episode, THE WALKING DEAD, episode three shifts its attention from the ruins of the wolves-battered Alexandria to the central super-heroes of Rick, Michonne and Daryl, as they lead a gaggle of dead-weight Alexandrian’s to help sway the herd away from the city.

Of course…there’s that damned horn. The same horn that we heard at the climax of episode 1 and whose origins were explained in the middle of episode 2.

As the zombie pack starts making its way toward the sound, the heroes splinter off into groups, with Michonne, Glenn, Nicholas, Heath and other assorted zombie-fodder Alexandrian extras along for the ride.

Daryl continues to rampage down the highway to the pulsing strains of Bear McCreary’s music, and Rick makes a sprint back to the slaughtered-ghoul wall where they left the RV.

The dead are everywhere. And we mean EVERYWHERE. This season is in fact the most zombie-heavy round of them all and it gives us a chance to pause and really admire just how bloody (literally) miraculous KNB’s work here is. It’s an embarrassment of amazing design and nightmarish application. Truly, no matter your take on the show, no filmed entertainment has ever shown us the living dead as expertly, imaginatively realized as TWD. We’re actually rather spoiled by how good this show is…

I digress.

In the Michonne/Glenn gang, one Alexandrian gets his throat ripped out, the other gets his back bitten. After the offending ghouls are dispatched, the unfortunate bitee acknowledges his impending fate but opts to soldier on anyway an help the gang. As they walk, we get to explore some of Michonne’s softer, human side as she tenderly discusses the soon-to-be zombified man’s wife. It’s a mildly affecting passage that further exemplifies the emotional core that has always been essential to TWD’s success.

Meanwhile, Rick continues his mad dash, finds a slaughtered survivor now a hot mess of guts and parts all torn asunder that Rick has to gruesomely pick through to raid needed supplies.

Glenn and the increasingly distracted Nicolas split from their team, with the intent of letting off a smoke signal when they reach their destination, leaving Michonne and Heath and a recently shot Alexandrian (as well as the chomped lad) in a pet store. Nicolas is breaking down, a condition realized by having the sound drop and a tinnitus-esque ringing take over the audio. Glenn tries to bring him back down to earth (“you’re not that guy anymore!” he says).

We know Nicolas will die soon. What we don’t know is how and what the consequences will be.

Rick makes it to the RV and is off.

Back in the pet store, Michonne hears a banging behind a puppy poster and suddenly ghouls spill out from behind a hidden door. The noise from the zombie’s groaning attracts the herd and in seconds thousands of zombies are at the store’s door. The gang escapes, people die.

At the same time, Glenn and Nicolas get trapped on a dumpster by the herd, who come at them from every which way in an intense, terrifying sequence. Nicolas goes deeper into his daze, turns to face his panic-stricken partner and blows his own brains out, dragging a shocked Glenn in to the crowd of zombies.

And Glenn is promptly ripped to shreds in slow motion.

There are those who swear that it was Nicolas’ body getting consumed by the dead and that Glenn may have rolled under the dumpster and will live to fight another die.

We don’t buy it. Glenn is dead. And it sucks. In fact, it’s going to be hard to forgive THE WALKING DEAD for a while. I feel like I did at the tail of Frank Darabont’s adaption of King’s THE MIST. Cheated. Like the show has contempt for me, the devoted audience.

With 10 minutes left to go, Rick is attacked in the RV by members of The Wolves, which he quickly lays waste to. But then, the RV won’t start. And the zombies move in…and move in…and…

See you next week!

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Event Report: When Ron Became Lon Chaney in Hollywood

Shock Till You Drop

Event Report: When Ron Became Lon Chaney in Hollywood

Hollywood horror film historian David Del Valle reports on a very special screening of the Lon Chaney classic THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.

Ron Chaney is the great grandson of Lon Chaney Sr. and the grandson of Lon Chaney Jr. and it has long been one of his goals in life to honor the legacy these two men have left in the world of show business and especially the Horror genre. I first met Ron in the late 1990’s at Forrest J Ackerman’s house in Hollywood and then, later, we became good friends when I moved to Palm Springs where Ron maintains a residence with his wife and daughters. At the time I hosted a radio program down there and Ron was my special guest for nearly three hours we talked about both of his famous relatives and the amazing roles they created in their careers. We mainly focused on a book started by his grandfather Lon Chaney Jr. who was also dedicated to preserving his father’s legacy and that of his family.

A few weeks ago, Ron appeared for the 90th anniversary of his great grandfather’s most famous role that of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA at the Egyptian theater as part of Beyond Fest, now in its third year at the American Cinematheque. Ron addressed a full house that afternoon dressed in period complete with a top hat. The print screened was a 16mm Blackhawk chosen so they could match the score to the live musicians Ron had been working with to try and replicate the experience audiences had back in 1925. After the screening, Ron, with the help of make-up wizard Casey Wong, recreated the Phantom makeup designs Lon Chaney Sr. had gone to such lengths to disfigure his own face with in that cinematic nightmare that still haunts the imagination of movie goers around the world.

I wish the print for Phantom had been better since the theater was packed with fans of all ages and some, of course, might not have had an opportunity to see a silent film on the big screen with live musicians. However, sadly, the print was terrible and actually stopped at least twice during the performance. I have seen such films as THE MAN WHO LAUGHS and BELOVED in a theater with the great late Gaylord Carter at the organ, so I do know the difference it can make to showcase these rare silent films with an audience and I’ve seen the joy these wonderful films can bring to the 21st Century.

The saving grace of this presentation was of course Ron Chaney himself, a very nice guy and unlike some of the other sons and daughters of horror stars of the past, very knowledgeable about both Chaney’s career’s and films. Lon Chaney Jr. began the initial work on the tome “Century of Chaney’s” and then Ron took up the slack writing in great detail about the life and times of both men so I am hopeful this proposed book, which has be decades in the making, will finally see the light of day in the next couple of years. Ron has also been busy trying to secure the rights to film a new version of LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, the most famous of the lost silent films of the 20’s.

When I lived in Palm Springs in 2000, I performed for Ron in a presentation he called “Chaney’s Weekend House of Horrors” presenting different scenes with live actors from THE WOLF MAN and PHANTOM, a project he put together along with his brother Gary, who played the mummy. I played Sir John Talbot the Claude Rains role opposite Ron as Laurence Talbot/The Wolf Man. The late Jean Carson, who was an actress you may remember from I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE, as well as the original THE TWILIGHT TV show, played the gypsy Maleva. The show was attended by Bela Lugosi Jr who also attended this most recent screening of the PHANTOM.

At the end of that troubled but historically important screening, Ron presented himself in full make up and invited the sold out audience to come to the lobby for photos creating a huge line of fans waiting to get their photo taken with Erik the Phantom. I am pleased to say that as long as Ron Chaney is around the legacy of a Century of Chaney’s is secure…

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Interview with Horror Filmmaker Jill Sixx Gevargizian

AnythingHorror Central

Interview with Horror Filmmaker Jill Sixx Gevargizian

From her first horror short CALL GIRL, to POLICE BRUTALITY and indie Kickstarter short THE STYLIST, Jill Sixx Gevargizian is killing it in horror and has become one of the front running faces of female horror directors. So I was excited to have the opportunity to catch up with horror director Gevargizian. We had a chance to discuss her new horror film short, GRAMMY, which will be debuting at Spooky Empire in Orlando this year, as well as giving us an update on THE STYLIST and she also lets us in on how much really goes into bringing a horror short to the screen. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the horror goodness of Jill Sixx Gevargizian.

filmmaker Jill Sixx Gevargizian

EvilQueenB: Congrats on the success of all of your short films! How do you balance the cons, screenings, filming and being a hairstylist?

Jill Sixx Gevargizian: Thank you! I’m not sure how I balance it honestly. I do hair full-time and spend almost all my free-time on filmmaking stuff. That is my only means for making a living–movies only cost me money! Every part of filmmaking costs–making it, submitting it to festivals, traveling to those festivals. It’s a never-ending money sucker.

Evil: THE STYLIST, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter is being completed, can you tell us about that and when we will be seeing it?

Jill: To be frank, our Kickstarter only funded 1/3 of that project. Another third came from a private investor and the rest from myself. I produced the film with director of photography Robert Patrick Stern and production designer Sarah Sharp. Thanks to their talent and experience I think we created something really special. We will soon start submitting to film festivals and hope to premiere somewhere exciting in the Spring. Najarra Townsend (CONTRACTED) stars in the film as Claire; a hairstylist obsessed with the notion of perfection. She was a true pleasure to work with and her performance brought this character to life in way I could have only dreamed. THE STYLIST is a very emotional film, which is a first for me. I have never felt so connected to something I’ve made and I want to continue to feel that way about my work.

Evil: How much pre-production goes into bringing a short film to the screen?

Jill: I, personally, spend a shit load of time in pre-production. Everyone is different. On THE STYLIST I spent 4-5 months on prepro and I think it shows. The less you prepare, the sloppier the final product is. Prepping is my thing and most important in filmmaking- or anything really!  It also depends on the project–THE STYLIST I knew was the film I wanted to change the game for me, so I hired an all-pro crew and spent a lot of time preparing with them. That film is 15 minutes long. And to give you an idea how long the entire process takes–we shot it in February and we’re just now doing the final assembly. That 8 months of post-production! It’s taken me over a year to complete THE STYLIST. It takes a lot of focus and passion to finish a film. It’s full of up and downs, but you just have to keep going. In comparison, GRAMMY is only 2 minutes long and it took only 2.5 months to complete from beginning to end.

Evil: Now that you have tackled short films will a full length horror film be in your future?

Jill: People ask this so often–it’s a matter of opportunity and money. I would LOVE to make a feature-length! It takes so much money just to make a short and it’s very hard to find the money. I just can’t see how one would find enough to make a feature, without a big company behind them forking out the money. One day, I hope!

Evil: Tell us about your newest short film, GRAMMY which will be screened at Spooky Empire.

Jill: GRAMMY is a micro short that I made for Crypt TV–which is a online distributor of horror content owned by Eli Roth. It should premiere on their platforms later this year. So, I thought I’d try to get it into a few festivals prior. I wrote GRAMMY with my good friend Jill Towerman and it was inspired by the pressure society places on women to wear makeup. The short itself is fun and bit silly. I can’t say too much without spoiling the film. It’s about a little girl (Hala Finley) who wakes up from an overnight at grandma’s house to discover there’s more to Grammy (Marilyn Hall) than meets the eye. I doubt people will pick up on my political subtext, but it’s there! HA!

Evil: So far, what has been one of your best moments working in the horror genre?

Jill: I’d have to say it was seeing my first film, CALL GIRL, adapted into a comic by Japanese artist Daiju Kurabayashi and producer Hiro Fujii. Not only is the the most flattering thing that can happen as an artist–to inspire more art–but it’s better than my film! And anyone can download it for free–in English or Japanese–here: http://callgirlcomic.curse.jp/

Evil: What’s your next project?

Jill: I do not have another project slated as of now. I will be focusing on submitting THE STYLIST to festivals all over the world and writing. Next year I plan to travel a lot with THE STYLIST. I think that is an important to enjoy all the work you put in. I also find that my work has a much bigger effect on people if I am at the screenings. Rather than just finishing a film, putting it out and moving onto a new project. It shows a whole other level of dedication. But I hope to be working on something new soon and am open to any possibilities! I would really love to work with Robert Patrick Stern and Sarah Sharp again.

Twitter

www.SixxTape.com

www.SlaughterMovieHouse.com

Stay Bloody!!!

Filed under: Females in Horror, Guest Contributor, Horror Short Films, Independent Horror Scene, Interviews, New Posting

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Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION

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Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION

Run, don’t walk, to catch this latest and last installment in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise…

While the last several PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films have been (let’s face it) a bit lackluster, this latest edition of the franchise surpasses all expectations and is frighteningly and intensely intelligent. Instead of a run-of-the-mill cheapie, found-footage grab for cash during the Halloween season, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION is a startling and visionary film that can only be described as a work of art worthy of modern savants such as Lars von Trier and Gasper Noë.

Much like Fritz Lang’s classic silent science fiction film METROPOLIS, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION is an allegory of Marxist alienation pitting the ruling classes against the proletariat while exploring the danger and horror of unbridled personal passion and mob rule. Most of this intellectual and artistic observation is due to input from prolific screenwriter Adam Robitel (his 2015 avant-garde horror film THE TAKING OF DEBORAH LOGAN is known as one of the most thoughtful meditations on denial of dialectic desituationism and affirmation of cultural post textual theory in the 21st Century).

Protagonists Ryan (Chris J. Murray) and Emily (Brit Shaw) are a happily married, heterosexual white bourgeois couple with a mentally disabled daughter named Leila (Ivy George, who does an impeccable job playing an eight year-old with the mental capacity of a three year-old). Isolated in their extremely large and sprawling house, and with no interaction with the outside world, they spend their days staring at blinking lights and at absurdly numerous television and computer screens. Ryan’s upper middle class employment as a gaming developer forces him to work remotely, estranged from not only his product but his fellow man, on a screen barely one foot across. Despite the absolute exploitation of his own creative spirit, the game (which never materializes) is interpolated into a post cultural paradigm of expression that includes art as a whole.

Ryan’s brother Mike (Dan Gill) randomly appears one day in the house and plans to stay with the family, to which they oddly don’t object. While Mike quips existential, Kafka-esque one-liners designed to question the validity of their subconceptualist rationalism and structural materialism, the two parents don’t seem to react and remain sequestered in their glass-walled, white, suffocating bourgeois interior. The beautiful Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is also trapped in the house, with no apparent relation to anyone. This surreal experiment soon makes Skyler the primary caregiver to tiny Leila while Emily is tasked with repetitively removing groceries from brown bags, over and over, despite the fact that she never leaves the house or goes grocery shopping. The family never eats the food she unpacks, indicating her own failure to connect to her fellow man as anything but a consumer and her inability to connect to her family as anything but an object of slave labor in the kitchen. This obviously Freudian deconstruction is a touchingly simple way to denote Emily’s dissatisfaction with her own role as Mother.

Eventually, Ryan finds a video camera from 1992 in a box in the garage, his only window to the outside world and to other people. In his desperation to connect with other human beings, he begins obsessively watching the video tapes left with the camera, drawing Emily and Mike, and eventually Leila and Skyler, into his demented and manic need to go back to 1992 and prevent his own class alienation under the guise of saving Leila from the inevitable downfall of capitalism. Unfortunately, the entire family is being stalked by the specter of Marxism in the form of a ghastly black entity seeking to steal Leila and force her back into 1992 where a coven of Marxist witches will enact a ritual designed to destroy the power of the bourgeoisie by giving political support to their revolutionary leader named Toby. To the upper-class family, this leader seems to be little more than a demon designed to point out the inherent immorality and inhumanity in their lifestyles; he seems to want to destroy everything they have in order to redistribute their wealth to the Marxist witches (their house is built upon the destroyed ruin of the coven’s original home, torn away from them by the fires of capitalism and trickle-down economics). However, the absurdity, and some would say the failure, of subconceptualist rationalism which is a central theme of Rushdie’s SATANIC VERSES emerges again in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION when a portal to 1992 opens up in Leila’s bedroom, forcing the family to take drastic measures to protect her from the dark forces of the futility of class consciousness.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION’s filmmakers designed gorgeous natural lighting thoughtfully intended as homage to Stanley Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON. The large house is various shades of pale light whites and grays polluted by the blackness of night when the family is under attack from Toby.

Just like the sans-culottes during their reign of terror in the French Revolution, the coven of witches and Toby assault the family and threaten to execute them physically and morally in order to restore a working-class Jacobin socialism in which witches can freely practice their demonic conjurations without fear of capitalists burning down their home.

Ultimately, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION is a Nietzsche-esque escalation between good and evil, a battle between Id and Superego, in which allegorical demons battle the soulless, amoral darkness of bourgeois identity. The filmmakers force the audience to choose between the post cultural paradigm of expression and cultural rationalism; this “ghost story” promotes the use of structural materialism to attack outdated, elitist perceptions of narrativity and denotes the role of the viewer as participant in this tale of terror rather than simply creator. Mainly it is the many 3-D jump scares that really accomplish this.

Run, don’t walk, to see this beautiful Camus-like example of modern existential and political art, which I suspect will be on many people’s short-list for the Oscars in March.

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5 Must See Subtitled Horror Films on Netflix

AnythingHorror Central

5 Must See Subtitled Horror Films on Netflix

by EvilQueenB

I have touted the greatest of subtitled horror films, although most people are quick to dismiss them. With reactions being no one wants to read and watch a horror film at the same time! Well these 5 films will help re-evaluate your thoughts on subtitled films by showing you horror comes in all different film forms!

Please note some of these trailers have been English dubbed, but these are subtitled on Netflix.

I SAW THE DEVIL (2010)

This Korean film tells the story of a secret agent whose fiancee is killed by a serial killer. Consumed with rage and grief, Kim Soo-Hyeon goes on a sadistic rampage in order to track down the killer. This film is bloody, gory, suspenseful and has one of the best endings I’ve seen in a long time.

THE HORDE (2009)

This French film tells the story of a group of less than lawful police officers looking for revenge against a gang who murdered their colleague. What starts out as a strategic plan turns into a bloody fight for survival against a horde of zombies. The film is fast paced, action packed and gives a new spin on zombies.

HIGH LANE (2009)

When a group of friends go rock climbing in a closed off part of Croatia they get more than they bargained for when their only way back home is destroyed and they end up being hunted in the forest. Although this is not a new concept in horror of stranded friends in a forest being hunted it is however one of the better done horror films on the subject.

DEAD SNOW (2009)

A group of friend’s snow getaway is interrupted by a group of Nazi zombies. This Norwegian film is a great installment in the zombie genre. It’s fun, it’s blood soaked and the sequel, DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD is a rare example of sequel that is better than the first film (plus it isn’t subtitled).

[REC] 4 APOCALYPSE (2014)

The [REC] franchise to me is one of the best foreign subtitled series in the horror genre. If you haven’t watched the first 3 films I recommend watching those first and then moving on to this newest installment. Angela the reporter from the [REC] and [REC] 2 returns, but she is now quarantined on a boat, but she is not alone in this voyage. Even with a 4th installment, this series is still going strong and how many American horror films can say that!

Did EvilQueenB miss any great subtitled horror on Netflix? Let us know!!

Stay Bloody!!!

Filed under: Guest Contributor, Horror Lists, New Posting

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Review: SHOCK Crucifies the MARTYRS Remake

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Review: SHOCK Crucifies the MARTYRS Remake

SHOCK weighs in on the Blumhouse remake of classic French shocker MARTYRS.

I must preface this review by saying that I have not seen the original French MARTYRS. Travesty, I know. But it allows me a unique opportunity to review the 2015 remake without being influenced by the original. Basically, I can judge it just as a movie, not as a remake. 

MARTYRS tells the story of Lucie, a young girl who escapes from a warehouse where she has been tortured for an untold amount of time. The cops have no clues and Lucie is sent to a Catholic orphanage, where she is befriended by Anna, an impossibly cheerful girl who stops at nothing to befriend Lucie. 

The girls grow up, and we next see Lucie as she is brutally murdering a seemingly-perfect family family who lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere. She calls Anna, saying she found the monsters who held her captive. Anna can’t believe that Lucie actually killed them, and she has her doubts that these people actually abused Lucie. In fact, she even attempts to call 911, but chickens out after two rings. Anna gives in and helps Lucie clean up the mess, and in doing so discovers a well-hidden tunnel that leads to a massive underground prison, complete with graphic photographs of tortured girls. Anna finds a young girl, Sam, in one of the cells. She tries to help the girl escape, but instead they are set upon by a flock of men who chase the three girls through the woods before catching them and locking all three up downstairs. The torture begins anew, and Anna finally learns the diabolical plot this cabal is involved in.

I did not like MARTYRS.

Maybe it is because I don’t have a religious background, but I didn’t “get” MARTYRS. Since the original has been out for a handful of years, I don’t feel like it is a spoiler to say that the basic idea of MARTYRS is to torture human beings to the brink of death in order to see god or an afterlife. I believe in neither, so to me this seems a huge waste of time and totally illogical. Wouldn’t everyone “see” something different? These religious nuts – of which there are a lot, apparently – are led by a stern woman who seems much more like a businesswoman than a zealot. Other than when she is trying to describe the goal of her group (which she does in a vague way, making me think the screenwriter chickened out of getting too directly religious with it), there is no religious fervor; no bible quotes; no incurring the wrath of god.

Putting aside the religious logic – or lack thereof – there were plenty of other problems with the film. I felt no emotional pull to Lucie or Anna. I thought the friendship between them as children was sweet, but as adults, where we spend the bulk of our time with them, I felt nothing. They are not developed as adult characters. We first see Lucie when she is killing her tormentor; we first see Anna when Lucie calls her for help. There is no sense of where these girls are in their lives. Do they have jobs? Do they have significant others or roommates? Are they happy? They become very two-dimensional: Lucie focused on revenge and banishing the monsters from her head; Anna focused on helping her friend. 

Lucie also seemed to think that no one “believed” her. I don’t know if she was referring to the “monsters” she sees, or to the actual abuse. The abuse seems pretty indisputable; the monsters she sees are clearly in her head, a result of the lack of any sort of counseling. The “monsters” she sees disappear from the plot pretty quickly, making me wonder what the point was to begin with.

I’m not sure who this film is made for. If you liked the original, watch that again. If you didn’t like the original, you probably aren’t going to want to watch the remake. I don’t see this getting a major theatrical release, so it isn’t likely that dumb teenagers are going to wander into a new horror film and fall in love with it. Even if they did, I think it is too esoteric and tries to be too “deep” for a mindless horror fan.

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Review: Graphic Horror meets Western in BONE TOMAHAWK

Shock Till You Drop

Review: Graphic Horror meets Western in BONE TOMAHAWK

SHOCK heaps praise upon moody horror/western hybrid BONE TOMAHAWK.

Imagine THE SEARCHERS melted into CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and you’ve scratched the surface of the devasting and much-hyped horror/western hybrid BONE TOMAHAWK, opening today in select US theaters.

Debut writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s moody, slow-burning meditation on violence starts with splatter, as a pair of drifters painfully saw away at the still-living throats of a gaggle of sleeping travelers in the scorching desert, robbing them and having verbose debates about everything from the weather to how many arteries are in the human body. Said drifters are played by David Arquette (SCREAM) and genre legend Sid Haig (THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, SPIDER BABY, hundreds of others) and with this bit of eccentric casting, it’s clear Zahler (who is best known as a pulp novelist) is aiming to bridge the gap between the grindhouse and the arthouse, set as the depravity is against a sun-baked, Terrence Mallick-tinted landscape and powered by hideous, casual acts of cruelty. This unsettling opening sets the tone for the queasy amalgam of stomach-churning, eye-filling and semi-heady action that follows and, though the movie might owe a small debt of gratitude to recent, overly-chatty Quentin Tarantino works like INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and DJANGO UNCHAINED, BONE TOMAHAWK is a far less showy, far more disturbing and ultimately, a considerably more effective effort.

The story kicks into gear shortly after that aforementioned, grisly pre-credits opening, with the drifters attacked by a brutish native tribe and the surviving thug then rolling, dazed, into a dusty gulch. After a barroom scuffle leaves him shot in the leg, the drunken sod gets imprisoned by the Sheriff (played with typical grace and authority by the great Kurt Russell, who also takes the lead in Tarantino’s next western feature, THE HATEFUL EIGHT). When the wife of a recently crippled citizen (Patrick Wilson, INSIDIOUS) is called in to tend to the prisoner’s wounds, both convict and caregiver are attacked and kidnapped in the dead of night by the very same tribe that we saw in the opening. Turns out this is no mere clichéd clan of angry indigenous peoples; rather this is a species of human monsters, cannibalistic and feral and now, very, very pissed off.

Russell, along with his aged and kindly deputy (played by an amazing and barely recognizable Richard Jenkins from TV’s SIX FEET UNDER), a macho Marshall (Mathew Fox) and a limping, borderline hysterical Wilson, launch a party to track the tribe to their lair. Along the way the men talk, argue, bond and battle the elements. In fact, for a good portion of BONE TOMAHAWK’s running time, narrative takes a back seat to mood, tone and amusing, matter-of-fact conversation that serves to create an immersive environment that drags the viewer in, making them an auxiliary member in the men’s quest. Listening to Jenkins muse about how he wishes he could effectively read a book in the bath without ruining it, may not seem to serve any sort of purpose. But what it does is make you love this man, so when he enters Hell in the final third of the film, we are genuinely in knots, worrying about his safety.

Now, about that final third…

Without giving away too much, suffice to say that for the first two thirds of BONE TOMAHAWK, we’re stationed squarely in existential, Cormac McCarthy-meets-DEADWOOD territory; it’s most assuredly a purely cinematic western and a damn good one at that. But, when the men meet the monster they be seeking, the shift into full-blown, graphic horror is alarming and, in some sequences, difficult to endure. In fact, there is at least one scene of butchery that might just be the most shocking, emotionally traumatic sequence of Grand Guignol I’ve seen in any film. I’ve tried to shake it and, upsettingly, I just cannot seem to un-see it…

That said, BONE TOMAHAWK is no mere exploitation film and its horror elements aren’t tacked on, they evolve organically and are very much part of the landscape of the film. The movie is every inch a masterpiece, bold, minimalist of movement but profound in its impact and featuring solid character work by top-drawer actors giving voice to lyrical dialogue. And, it must be said that, unlike many westerns and, certainly unlike every horror film, there is almost no music in the movie. No score. No melody. No tone and no sound but the wind to latch our senses onto. We’re lost with these people in an arid, down-spiraling nightmare; a Conrad-informed venture into the heart of sandy darkness that doesn’t end well for anyone involved.

For my money, BONE TOMAHAWK isn’t just the best horror movie of 2015, it’s the best movie, full stop.

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