Cowboys and cannibals

Richard Jenkins (L) and Kurt Russell

One of the great pleasures of genre movies is that genre boundaries are never completely fixed. Every now and then a film comes along that pushes the inside of the envelope and takes a genre picture in new directions. Such a film is Bone Tomahawk.

This begins as a conventional Western, and very handsomely mounted it is, and then in the final quarter veers into splatter movie territory with just as much conviction and command of the generic elements. I would imagine the pitch for the movie went along the lines of ‘Imagine The Searchers meets The Hills Have Eyes’.

Whether or not the audience goes with it remains to be seen but this is an impressive debut by writer-director S.Craig Zahler. It begins as a standard ‘four men ride out into jeopardy’ picture. A young woman has been kidnapped from the town of Bright Hope by a native clan so bloodthirsty even the other tribes have nothing to do with them.

Town sheriff Kurt Russell, looking increasingly like he’s been hewn from solid rock, leads a posse comprising his deputy (Richard Jenkins), the woman’s husband (Patrick Wilson),  and a nattily-dressed psychopath (Matthew Fox).

The journey is perilous but the real danger comes when they approach the clan lair. Suddenly we are in splatter movie territory as the posse is beset by savage cannibals who are looking to re-stock their larder. It’s a sudden and jarring shift in tone and if it doesn’t quite come off it does at least leave the audience as disoriented and confused momentarily as our heroes.

Just as the first three quarters of the film was faithful to the Western conventions, the final quarter is equally faithful to the conventions of the horror movie. To be fair Zahler nails his colours to the mast early doors; the film opens on a throat slitting, and also features a cameo from Rob Zombie alumnus Sid Haig.

It’s in this final segment that we encounter the scene that has made the film notorious. Already when I mention Bone Tomahawk the response is usually ‘Oh is that the one where….?’ Yes it is. It features the most brutal, graphic, and shocking death scene I have ever come across in mainstream cinema. It is unbelievably gruesome; but it works.

It raises the stakes for our heroes to a level where we cannot possibly hope for salvation and that is exactly what the audience needs to feel this point. The best horror movies offer the audience little comfort, like Audition which offers none at all, and that’s what this scene does.

In the end Bone Tomahawk has all the makings of a cult classic. The performances are very good and Russell and Jenkins are superb; this may be the best performance Jenkins has given in a long and distinguished career.

The visuals and the pacing are first class too. This feels like a classic Western, there is no sense of sleight of hand on Zahler’s part. The Western is not a Trojan horse for a horror movie; it is incredibly faithful and respectful to the genre conventions.

But the film’s crowning achievement is in its writing. Zahler is a novelist to trade and his characters are rich and well realised. Everyone gets their moment and he captures perfectly the tone and the mood of the period through the entirely convincing formality of the dialogue.

Bone Tomahawk is a hidden gem; a film to sit through again and savour. But not perhaps on a full stomach.