Bone Tomahawk (2015) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★ 1.8K

  i retired from letterboxd over bone tomahawk. i had given bone tomahawk 4.5 stars because it seemed like a knowing and meditative work on the intersection of the Italian Cannibal Cycle and The Western which it totally is. i didn't understand at the time that Bone Tomahawk was the first Trump Horror. Later when I read an interview with Zahler and an article about the production company he works with it is clear they are explicitly authoring MAGA-sploitation which is something i find interesting but ultimately cannot countenance. i no longer stand by my review but i don't want to delete it. i keep trying to write ANOTHER Bone Tomahawk review which i still might do or watch the Vince…

• Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 25

  89/100

  Showing this amazing film to people and eagerly awaiting and soaking up their reaction to THAT scene might be my current favorite past-time.

• Review by Sean Baker 21

  This was in my queue forever. Overall, I found it to be a fun, pulpy romp.
  Really happy that Zahler is fighting the fight and making original modern genre cinema. Some of the most disturbing onscreen violence I've seen in quite some time.

  I think speeding up the pace would greatly help. But I also have to respect that this is clearly what Zahler wants... Brawl is 132 mins and Dragged Across Concrete is 159 mins. He likes his films on the long side.

• Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★★ 3

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  “say goodbye to my wife, i’ll say hello to yours.”

• Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★ 78

  The Doctor has been kidnapped. Her husband, the injured Cowboy, is beyond grief. The Cowboy's best friend, the Gentleman, volunteers to go and bring her back. Who's leading the rescue? Well, that would be the Sheriff and the Deputy. Who kidnapped the Doctor? Let's say the kidnappers like to dress in white chalk, make funny sounding noises, shoot folks with bow and arrows, and eat dinner like they're Hannibal Lecter. Sounds yummy, right? From the opening shot, Bone Tomahawk, grabs you by the throat tight, and cuts your jugular. It's a western, with some elements of the supernatural, set in the 1890's. Led by an all star cast featuring the ageless Kurt Russell, the charming Richard Jenkins, the surprisingly awesome…

• Review by davidehrlich ★★½ 12

  casting and flat lensing of the opening scene prompted me to expect something much more in the style of a Sy-Fy Channel original, so i was pleasantly surprised by the simple, leathery pleasures of this revenge western. it adds up to approximately nothing, and never seems to make the most of its accomplishments (the business of dealing with the bad guys is more than a little shrugged off), but 4 men — the right 4 men — shuffling through the frontier in search of god know's what... works for me. if Tarantino had taken a crack at this and decided try his hand at a Searchers of his very own... things could've gotten interesting.

  you could say that my thoughts on the movie are split right down the middle.

• Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★★ 4

  bone tomahawk isn’t forgiving. its brutal, dirty, cold, but at the same time it begs you to hope for these characters, even when everything seems lost. it gives you a sliver of light in the most godless moments and then breaks your heart, and then gives you light again. it’s everything it planned to be and never isn’t perfect.

• Review by sydney ★★½ 6

  in a year someone will say "did you see bone tomahawk, you know, the western about the cannibals?" and i'll be like "what? cannibals? ohhhh...you mean the movie where richard jenkins thinks the flea circus is real and i cried about it? yeah, that was pretty good"

• Review by karen h. ★★★★½ 1

  i feel like s craig zahler is the only director who gets just how CRUNCHY human bodies are and it is utterly horrible to watch (to be clear, i love this movie)

• Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 11

  This has got to be one of the most impressive debut films in recent years.

  It's easy to dismiss this film as a horror western drenched in all the tropes that go along with that. Had this been a film that's sole intention would be to shock or to relish in its cowboy roots (or boots) then it would be a fine film. Not special, just good.

  But this is so much more than that.

  Let's start with the ridiculously brilliant dialogue. Zahler proves he's not only a great director but a gifted scribe as well. The authenticity of the idiomatic choices he makes are spot on, imbuing his film with a sense of realism that accompanies the already absurd…

• Review by Johnny Clyde ½ 20

  Movies I can't enjoy as an indigenous person list.

  Wow this movie is racist.
  Not just a little bit racist, but like....really really racist.
  I was really looking forward to it, not knowing what it was about.

  Basically it's a cowboys vs. indians movie.
  A couple of people are kidnapped by "savages" so a group of people go out to get them. Before they go, a walk on native character explains that the people they're looking for aren't native. They're troglodytes.
  When asked what they look like, the native man says they look like natives but they're not natives.
  This really felt like the filmmakers were trying to immunize themselves from being called racist.
  By having a native walk on…

• Review by NoCopZone ★ 12

  I hate to say this, as it was a Secret Cinema rec (shout outs to Harlequinade! I really do think this was a good pick for me, and also, sorry) and I had it in my watchlist and was excited to see it, but I kinda hated this.

  This is a fascist troll of a film, with its ur-racist genocide against the violent kidnapping savages narrative explained and laid out by an indigenous character, who distances "real natives" such as himself from the monstrous cannibal "troglodyte" villains of the film, which is little more than a "win the argument about whether this movie is racist on Reddit" get out of jail free card.

  More cynical and nihilistic than the famously…