‘Bone Hill’ VOD Review (Amazon Prime)
Stars: Abby R Mooring, Jeremy Koch, James Whitecloud, Scott T. Whitesell, Roger Callard, Penelope Alex, Luke Ragotzy | Written by Wil Radcliffe | Directed by Daniel Falicki
Bone Hill centres its story on an ancient Native American curse coming to life, as a psychiatrist tries to save a young female patient whose psychoses might hold the key to ending the ancient evil.
Bone Hill started off mostly positively. The story did feel quite familiar, even if it had a very specific medically-themed ancient curse part of it, which came across a little bit weird, but at least it was different, I suppose. And the acting was decent, even if the action was slow. The dialogue seemed natural and even when it seemed like there might be a little too much talking and not enough horror, I enjoyed plenty of the scenes. The early interactions between Wade (Jeremy Koch) and Jean (Penelope Alex) were actually funny and naturally acted, and the same could be said for many of the other scenes in the first half of the movie.
The second half of the movie did not continue with this quality though. I was desperate for a bit more action and a bit more gore or scares, but none of those came until the last twenty minutes. Unfortunately, with the scenes becoming more emotional and more dramatic, the dialogue got steadily worse (often becoming hilariously bad) and the acting got worse – although that said, I thought Penelope Alex continued to entertain. If it wasn’t for a bit of blood and gore, this would have slotted nicely into a made-for-daytime-TV kind of film. There was a moment towards the end of the movie where the main protagonist was shouting to the ‘villain’ the background story and why/how he had to kill them. It seemed really, really strange and was put in there for people who maybe weren’t paying attention. The acting just seemed to get cheesier and cheesier as the film went on. This was unfortunately not the only badly written part of the script, as the cop involved in sorting everything out was really terrible at his job, even for low-budget horror movie standards.
There are, however, a few positives. On the whole, the movie was well shot, and there were some really nicely lit and shot scenes. The practical effects were a mixed bag, but on the whole, they were decent. The main villain looked good, especially in the black and red coloured scenes but there was one scene that let all of the other practical effects down. The filmmakers definitely knew this too, because the shots of the ‘dead body’ were only on screen for a second or less at a time. I’m sure they didn’t want the audience to see it. There was an attempt at adding some layers to the story and making this about the grief of the main character, but the script just wasn’t strong enough to pull it off.
There were a few good ideas here, but the script let things down. The inexperience of many of the actors did show and some of the most dramatic moments, alongside the poor script, made it very difficult for them. If you like a daytime cop thriller and don’t mind a bit of gore. Maybe Bone Hill is for you.
Bone Hill is available to stream on Amazon Prime now.
