Nerdly » ‘Bone Face’ Review

11th Feb2025

‘Bone Face’ Review

by Janine Pipe

Stars: Jeremy London, Elena Sanchez, Alli Hart, Miles Doleac, Artrial Clark, Ritchie Montgomery, Laura Cayouette, Jared Bankens, David Kallaway | Written and Directed by Michael Donovan Horn

When a masked killer slaughters several campers in a small town, a sheriff and a deputy track the murderer to a local diner where, using their investigative skills, they must discover which person in the diner is the actual killer.

I will start this review with a warning. If you go into Bone Face (written and directed by Michael Donovan Horn) expecting a Friday the 13th summer camp slasher and hoping for a new horror icon then you’re going to be disappointed. Go watch Heart Eyes instead. But if you understand the perminters – there has been a mass murder at a summer camp and the vast majority of this film is working out from a small cast of characters in a diner who did it – then you will be in for a treat.

Fortunately, I understood the assignment and was actually intrigued to see a different approach to a well loved subgenre of horror. And I enjoyed it a lot more than I had anticipated considering not a lot actually happens.

The film does start off at a summer camp where we join some counselors having a party in the pool house and all too soon carnage ensues as they are slaughtered one by one by a killer locally known as Bone Face due to the mask they wear. We learn this is the third summer camp slaughter and Bone Face has become a sort of Baba Yaga/Freddy Kreuger ‘scary story to tell in the dark’ type local legend in the area.

Sheriff Cronin (Jeremy London; Mallrats, Party of Five) and Deputy McCully (Elena Sanchez; The Hunger Games) are way out of their depth personnel-wise and whilst they wait for assistance from the Staties, they haul up inside a diner which they think would likely be somewhere the killer may have passed through. Soon evidence comes to light that in fact Bone Face has been there and they believe still is, posing as one of the patrons.

And so through various tests, revealing statements and personality traits becoming apparent, the Sheriff and Deputy make their deduction as to who they believe the killer to be. It’s sort of like Clue crossed with Sleepaway Camp crossed with Gilmore Girls and although it’s quite slow at times and the twists and turns can be worked out if you put your mind to it, I actually had a good time with it.

Elena Sanchez is particularly good as the Deputy and 100% who I would want turning up if I was in trouble in that town. There’s not an awful lot of stunt work but when it’s done, you can see she is trained and has worked on some big movies like Spiderman, Olympus has Fallen and Den of Thieves.

With Art the Clown having slashed through Christmas in Terrifier 3 and as previously mentioned, a new killer in town just in time for Valentine’s Day with Christopher Landon’s latest, Heart Eyes, there is still a ton of competition for the next Jason or Michael so Bone Face, in my opinion, makes for an interesting detraction from the format and does something a little different instead.