Picture this: you splurge on a stunning estate on AirBnB for a romantic weekend with your long-time partner, only for another couple to show up having done the same, on a different app. With the hosts not responding to messages online and the nearest H๏τel some 50 miles away, you decide to make the best of it and stay with the strangers. They seem nice enough.
Okay, maybe 50 miles doesn’t seem all that crazy, and you’re already wondering why one of the couples doesn’t try to book another place nearby. But it already seems like Joshua Friedlander’s script for Bone Lake has got some holes. Well, have you considered that Diego (Marco Pigossi) has been planning on using this weekend as the perfect setting to propose to his girlfriend, Sage (Maddie Hᴀsson), with an heirloom ring from his grandmother? Does that explain why they’d choose to stay with two complete strangers? It doesn’t.
To be sure, Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s Sєx-crazed thriller is purposefully tilted. If nothing here is all that believable, perhaps it is meant to stir some feelings of incredulity. The film’s frothy aesthetic is announced early with a cold open of two naked people escaping death through the forest, until one of them is pierced through the scrotum by a bow and arrow. So it’s not as if Morgan isn’t warning us that what we’re about to watch might be a bit wild.
Bone Lake Never Lives Up To Its Frothy Premise
Appreciably, that opening metonymic image tells us all we need to know about Morgan’s mission here. As the opening song tells us, we’re about to eat a ridiculous plate of Sєx and violence in a film about how one begets the other, and vice versa. The problem is, Bone Lake has four truly unlikeable characters doing absolutely unlikeable things. And Friedlander’s script is so poorly written that, even in the context of something so pulpy, no one is responding to their circumstances with any degree of normalcy.
Diego is a community college teacher and aspiring novelist; he is bizarrely ashamed of the former and bullish about the latter. The couple is driving across the country for Sage to start a new job as an editor, and to transition into a one-income household so that Diego can concentrate on finishing his book. Sage is uncomfortable about taking on so much financial pressure, especially since it is quite clear she is not exactly Sєxually satisfied with Diego, and because her own creative writing is taking a pause to feed his. We get all this information through clunky exposition, doled out in strange, forced moments.
The other couple, Cinnamon (Andra Nechita) and Will (Alex Roe), are immediately hospitable, warm and, most notably, Sєxually explicit. Yes, her name is Cinnamon, but don’t worry, she goes by Cin. Not much information is given about them except that Cin works in wealth management and that one of her more high-profile clients is Diego’s favorite author. What a coincidence! Never mind that Cin is oddly quick to offer to send his writing to Mr. Kearns. Suddenly, this romantic vacation has turned into a perfect opportunity for Diego’s career.
Bone Lake never lives up to its opening ten minutes, which is aces.
Almost immediately, Cin and Will go to work to seduce both Diego and Sage, the latter of whom is the only person here who seems to think the entire situation is a bit kooky (but only momentarily). What Cin and Will’s game is exactly remains elusive for the first half of the film, as they successfully start to break down the bonds between Diego and Sage, luring them into “games” in and around the house. Thus, the film slowly takes shape as something of a cross between Michael Heneke’s Funny Games and Speak No Evil.
Indeed, the film is at its best when leaning into its promised sadomasochism. Cin and Will’s frank and open Sєxual libidos reveal in Sage and Diego what they’ve been missing in each other, and when Morgan concentrates on the web-like, erotic dynamics, Bone Lake becomes more interesting and tense. But it does seem pulled between that and its extremely flat and forced comedy in a way that cheapens both the Sєx and the humor.
Roe and Hᴀsson are both strong actors, but Pigossi and Nechita seem adrift. Pigossi is never quite believable as meek, and his character is confusingly drawn. He is both an erotic novelist and scared of Sєx? Or is it that he wants Sєx but is so in his own world that he just doesn’t know how to satisfy Sage? Is he not adventurous enough, or is he too adventurous? For Sage’s part, why is an award-winning Sєx journalist staying with someone who doesn’t satisfy her and is adamant about not using toys in the bedroom?
Bone Lake never lives up to its opening ten minutes, which is aces. It is neither as Sєxy nor as enjoyably violent as it advertises itself to be, and even when things do blow up in the final act, the shock is ham-fisted for shock’s sake. Morgan and Friedlander can’t ever justify properly why Diego and Sage are staying behind with two creepy Sєx fiends, and especially can’t justify why Sage is such a powerless character, nor why she seems so beholden to a partner she does not seem to like.
Some of the violence is fun and goopy, and Bone Lake‘s denouement sticks the landing, though cinematographer Nick Matthews and team need to understand that lighting fake blood in the manner they do does risk looking like blackface. While it’s probably fair to say it wasn’t intentional, one does wonder about the lack of care that went into this and other decisions.
Haneke’s film, which Morgan and Friedlander seem to be referencing, works because it is so bleakly cynical and sociopathic. Part of its potential success lies in our ability to believe the light of the love that emanates from its victims over the black hole of the villains. But if all the characters are unbelievable, it seems hard to care about the spilled blood.
