There’s Life Before Watching ‘Bone Tomahawk,’ and Then There’s Life After Watching ‘Bone Tomahawk’

On a lark, I recently decided to put on Bone Tomahawk , starring the incomparable Kurt Russell, making the grave mistake of judging a book by its cover, or more aptly, a film by its poster. Pulling the movie from the backlog of Westerns, I assumed, like a fool, that I was in for your typical cowboy shoot-em-up based solely on how anonymous its box art looked next to movies like 3:10 to Yuma and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (I haven’t watched a lot of Westerns).

Having finally watched the film, I feel I must apologize to director S. Craig Zahler. I wasn’t familiar with your game. Bone Tomahawk is a remarkably badass, instant classic that scarred me for life in the best way possible.

Bone Tomahawk starts off like the setup to a dad joke. A drifter named Purvis (David Arquette), a no-nonsense, magnificently mustachioed sheriff named Hunt (Russell), his daffy deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), a haughty gunslinger named Brooder (Matthew Fox), and a doctor named Samantha (Lili Simmons) walk into a bar. Only, instead of a drawn-out punchline, Sheriff Hunt quickly draws on our drifter, and he’s taken away to be treated by the doctor on the detective’s deduction that the drifter was going to bring trouble with him into their small Old West town. Put a fork in it; the film might as well pull the curtain on itself at its 30-minute mark if it were your bargain-bin Western. Only, Bone Tomahawk is an entirely different beast of a film.

The next morning, a farmhand is brutally murdered, the sheriff’s office has been ransacked, and Purvis and Samantha are nowhere to be found. We’ve got a murder mystery in our breakfast, folks. The only evidence left at the scene of the crime(s) is a single arrow. According to the town’s professor (played by Castlevania Nocturne ‘s Zahn McClarnon), the enigmatic figures responsible for the havoc are so severely cut off from humanity that anyone unfortunate enough to be in their vicinity long enough to be considered a neighbor steers clear of their “territory” out of self-preservation. Oh, and the townsmen stand no chance against them. Not leaving well enough alone, Sheriff Hunt, Chicory, and Brooder form a posse with Samantha’s bedridden husband, Arthur, and set out on a rescue mission, not knowing they’re roving into their doom.

Admittedly, I probably should’ve wised up to this being a horror movie in Western clothing the moment Patrick Wilson’s face graced my screen. That guy is as synonymous with horror as J.J. Abrams is with mystery box-style storytelling. But I didn’t catch that the movie was genuinely one of the most viscerally unnerving horror movies I’ve ever seen because its opening two acts settled into a comfortable rhythm as a surprisingly comfy, albeit anxiety-inducing Western.

Along the posse’s two-day trip into what’s essentially the dangerously darkened, unexplored parts of a map in a Soulsborne video game, Bone Tomahawk sets a comfortable pace where, despite the clear and present urgency of their mission, the quartet’s dynamic goes the way of an endearing little road trip.