Hallowatch 2026 No. 2: Bone Lake (2024)
Tonight we're watching Bone Lake. Here's the wikipedia link; it has some spoilers in its synopsis. I'm also going to have some spoilers below; engage with this/them at your own level of comfort.
Bone Lake feels like watching a cover band perform an original. I'm pretty sure I've heard this one before but I can't quite place it; you wrote it? Is that why it mostly trades in cliches for its lyrics, solos, format, structure?
I don't think this movie did much in terms of groundbreaking so much as it did hauntological excavation of ideas like "horror movie sexy???" that were seemingly abandoned sometime in the 90s. Everything aside from the "rich kids are hunting the rest of us for sport" is fairly grounded and mundane, expressing anxieties around doing the "socially right thing" (the electric car); the place for pleasure and sex in relationships; the shift in a relationship from sex being novel to sex being mundane, of having a sexual proposition from another couple (which weirdly puts it in conversation with The Invite, my present favorite movie of 2026); the omnipresent surveillance apparatus we live under; the sociopath bedfellows being a social climber gets you; and the weight of the sins of the past, whether those are coming home to roost. I don't think it has terribly interesting things to say about any of the anxieties it expresses, but it does express them.
The actors for the protagonist-couple, Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi), turn in servicable performances; the actors for the antagonist couple seem to be having so much more fun. This wasn't the first horror movie I've watched where I was wondering "how's the murderer going to do it" but might've been the first where I knew the face of the murderer and was still asking that. Usually there's a level of disconnect or avatarisation that is required for that, it's not just "Here's William, with a chainsaw." Like I never felt that way for a Michael Haneke movie; maybe it was the wet-blanket-ness of Sage & Diego that I was rooting against.
The movie looks gorgeous, especially for the back half, especially for something shot digitally.
I'm sure someone will "Well Actually" about this being a thriller rather than horror, but that person can write about it on their own blog. Personally, once a guy takes an axe to the back of the head and then falls forward onto the chainsaw he was holding, splattering both protagonists with blood, a line is drawn and decided for me.
Would I watch again? Probably not. I don't feel like I missed much.
Would I watch a remake? Oh definitely.
Would I watch a sequel? I am apprehensive about injecting any sort of Ongoing Lore into this premise.
