10/25: Bone Tomahawk

Yeah, I'm still behind. Deal.

10/25: Today's horror flick was the horror-western starring the almighty Kurt Russell, Bone Tomahawk. I gotta tell ya, this movie could not have come at a better time. I'm a little under a week from the end of the binge, and yeah--I'm starting to burn out on horror flicks. However, one of my other favorite genres is Westerns, so this movie hits a pretty damn perfect medium between the two. Kurt Russell, as always a bad ass, plays a small town sheriff who is confronted with a group of cannibalistic cave-dwellers that steal several citizens from his gunslingin' town. He heads out with help to take on the cannibals and save the townspeople (namely crippled Patrick Wilson's wife) and gets way more than he bargained for. 

The movie functions as part classic Western ala The Searchers, and part graphic horror ala Cannibal Holocaust. It actually manages to be pretty damn successful at both. The rescue is quintessential Western, the landscape expanding out in all directions, the outlook bleak. The horror part is genuinely terrifying too, the inhumanness and hunger of the cannibals disgusting beyond belief. There's one scene when Kurt Russell and the rest (well, most of) of the cowboys finally reach the cave of the cannibals that was so horrible it's still sticking with me. It's realistic and stark, and really drives home everyone's plight at the hand of the cannibals. 

This movie is a rare case of Western horror done right, and it was a helluva needed break from the usual horror I've been partaking this month. It drags a bit here and there and is definitely a slow burn, but the payoff is worth it. Cannibals and Kurt Russell; how could you miss?

9/10