By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe and Marco Pigossi
Directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Written by Joshua Friedlander
Bleecker Street/LD Entertainment
If horror movies reflect the zeitgeist of their times, there must be a lot of dysfunctional couples out there. Following the tortured relationships in COMPANION and TOGETHER, to name just the most conspicuous examples, comes BONE LAKE, whose central duo’s issues aren’t as pronounced as in those other examples, though what ultimately happens to them becomes pretty extreme.
We get a good idea of what they’re potentially in for from BONE LAKE’s grabber of an opening scene, which has been previewed on-line but is best experienced in context, setting the stage in no uncertain terms for what’s to follow. From there, the setup is kinda like TOGETHER meets SPEAK NO EVIL, as early-30somethings Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi) arrive at a remote lake house for a getaway in the midst of a life/relationship change. Diego has decided to put a career in academia on hold to tackle a novel, which has led Sage to forego her preferred freelance journalism for a steadier gig as an editor. She’s not as happy about this as she lets on to Diego, though she tries to be encouraging of his writing ambitions. “You don’t have to play it safe…fuck ’em if they hate it,” she says at one point, the first part clearly echoing the ambitions of BONE LAKE writer Joshua Friedlander and director Mercedes Bryce Morgan as the scenario plays out.
That duo and their two leads create in Sage and Diego a couple who have problems but remain likable, who express a lived-in chemistry while still being at odds. They’re playfully sexual together, yet he can’t quite get her off. That tension is reflected in the setting: Their vacation spot is unexpectedly lavish, though it stands by the titular lake, which is said to be so-called due to skeletons discovered there decades ago. Given the hedonism that throbs through the story, however, that name is also a double entendre on the filmmakers’ part.
Things get hotter and heavier with the unexpected appearance of Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita), who have also reserved the house for the weekend. (Their names come loaded with subtext, though considering that Cin is short for Cinnamon and our heroine is Sage, you might wonder if they’ll be joined by another woman named Rosemary.) Clearly someone at the booking service screwed up, but the solution seems easy: The place is big enough that there’s more than enough space for four, and Will and Cin certainly seem friendly enough. And frisky, too; these two great-looking young people have an uninhibited passion for each other that stands in sharp relief to Sage and Diego. What’s more, the newcomers pick up on the tension between the latter two just as quickly as we do, leading to conversations and encounters that start out as awkward before becoming more sinister.
For a while, BONE LAKE is more of a psychosexual thriller than all-out horror, as Will and Cin home in on Sage and Diego’s weaknesses and turn on the manipulation and seduction. Roe and Nechita are alluring with an undercurrent of danger, intriguing us about how far they’re willing to go, in more than one way. There’s an undercurrent of danger around the mansion as well, which bubbles to the top when the group decide to break into a couple of locked rooms down one hall and find different kinds of weird stuff inside. Here and throughout, BONE LAKE’s polished craft, including the sumptuous cinematography by Nick Matthews and Kendra Bradanini’s well-appointed production design, provides significant visual appeal to complement its good-looking characters.
When things inexorably get darker to the point of life-threatening, Morgan and Friedlander deliciously turn the screws, lacing the gory goings-on (courtesy of makeup effects artist Bill Johnson, whose credits go all the way back to SLEEPAWAY CAMP II and III) with a generous helping of black humor and nicely paying off a few setups in the earlier going. While the story development in general isn’t overly surprising, the fun is in the details, and in the way the actors commit to the savage/survival sides of their roles as fully as they do to their variously flawed characters. While there are solid jolts in the last half hour or so of BONE LAKE, its true achievement is that one key moment of emotional gamesmanship got as big a gasp from a preview audience as any of the bloodletting.
