In 2015, Kurt Russell starred in Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful 8” in another western with plenty of blood. Star author Stephen King was both thrilled and shocked by the result.
Stephen King is not only one of the most popular and productive writers of all time, who after about half a century still publishes at least one new novel per year. He is also an enthusiastic film and series fan who X-Account regularly shares his opinion on new screen hits or works from cinema history – as one would expect from the author of “Shining”, “IT” or “Carrie”, his focus is primarily on genre works.
While he has recently been praising current films (including “MaXXXine,” “A Quiet Place: Day One,” and the Netflix hit “In the Waters of the Seine”), King has also taken the time to catch up on a film from 2015 – from which he says he didn’t expect much.
We are talking about “Bone Tomahawk”, with which S. Craig Zahler made his extraordinary directorial debut – caution, there are now slight spoilers about the content and development of the film!
Although “Bone Tomahawk” begins as a comparatively classic and leisurely frontier western, it ends as a merciless cannibal horror. King was obviously not prepared for this. He writes:
“I expected nothing more than a way to pass the time on a rainy Wednesday morning and what I got was a low-budget western epic. The dialogue alone makes the film worth watching. Beware the final act where a man is literally torn apart.”
BONE TOMAHAWK: I was expecting nothing but a time-passer on a rainy Wednesday morning, and got a low-budget Western epic. The dialogue alone makes it well worth watching. Beware the last act, when a man is literally torn apart.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 24, 2024
You might think that the 76-year-old is always up to date with the latest developments in genre cinema. But even a horror expert like King obviously misses something sometimes: After nine years, it’s long been known that Zahler, the maker of “Brawl In Cell Block 99” and “Dragged Across Concrete”, is one of the most exciting and ruthless genre directors around – and there’s a lot to be said about “Bone Tomahawk”, but certainly not that it’s suitable for just relaxing and looking away.
In the film, which for good reasons is only approved for ages 18 and up, Kurt Russell (who also played a western role in Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful 8” in the same year) plays Franklin Hunt, who works as a sheriff in the border region between Texas and Mexico. When one day several residents of his town disappear under mysterious circumstances, he sets out to search for them together with a deputy and a gunslinger…
“Bone Tomahawk” bei Amazon Prime Video*
In his 3.5-star review, author Michael Meyns also writes: “Zahler [legt] here with minimal budget a well-considered and convincingly staged late western [vor]. If ‘Bone Tomahawk’ ends in pure horror after a slow start, then this is a conclusive punch line with a regrettable contemporary relevance: the national founding myths of the West appear to have been definitively perverted and are reinterpreted as harbingers of an apocalypse of violence.” If you don’t know the film yet, you should definitely take a look!
In the following article you will find out which dizzying survival thriller Stephen King was so enthusiastic about that he would have loved to write it himself:
“Great and very, very scary”: Stephen King would have loved to have written this sweaty survival thriller himself
*The link to the Amazon offer is a so-called affiliate link. If you make a purchase via this link, we receive a commission.
