Directed By Mercedes Bryce Morgan

Starring – Alex Roe, Maddie Hasson, Marco Pigossi

The Plot – A couple’s (Pigossi, Hasson) romantic vacation at a secluded lakeside estate is upended when they are forced to share the mansion with a mysterious and attractive couple (Roe, Andra Nechita). In this darkly hilarious and seductive horror story, a dream getaway spirals into a nightmarish maze of sex, lies, and manipulation, bringing terrifying secrets to light and triggering a bloody battle for survival

Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, graphic nudity, adult language throughout and some drug use.

BONE LAKE Official Trailer (2025) Horror, Thriller Movie HD

POSITIVES

If you’re someone who enjoyed the opening act of “Barbarian”, but was then let down by the way the rest of that movie evolved, “Bone Lake” might just be the movie you’re looking for. I make that paralleled comparison because there’s a lot of similarities in the directorial debut from Mercedes Bryce Morgan that can easily be found in Zach Cregger’s movies, but mainly the stimulatingly unnerving style and thematic expansion that makes it a thriller with a lot to say about the state of the world. On the latter, this is a very unconventional and deconstructive script that balances its time between being an exploration on the resiliency of trust between couples in the dating world, but also a cautionary tale about opening your door to strangers and essentially the vulnerabilities that develop and weaponize from such interacting lifestyles forced to mingle, that directly clash with one another. Morgan’s self-awareness in tone helps keep the movie consistently engaging, featuring these vibrant personalities in characters whose parallels clash caustically with one another, yet never in ways that are even momentarily compromising to the integrity of the movie’s tensely uncomfortable atmosphere, which abides by the elements of dramatic allure during isolated moments apart from one another, with the audience essentially serving as the knowledgeable outsider who can see a trainwreck happening between them, from many miles away. As for stimulating style to compliment the aforementioned substance of the script, Morgan and cinematographer Nick Matthews initiate so much ambition and allure to every impeccable frame, not only in the motions of the lens that double down for interacting objects at the forefront of peaked curiosity among the characters, but also imaginatively intimate means of conveying statically impulsive yearning within their many conflicts, featuring lucid lighting schemes that splash affectionately with the elegant set designs, in order to articulate the perfect environment to lose your inhibitions. A lesser director would overlook such aspects as unnecessary ambitions that tack on inflation to a movie’s budget, but I love that Morgan effortlessly appraises intricate value towards immersing audiences in the provocative outlining to some of their occasional strangely bewildering actions, making this single stage setting emanate with the kind of feverish passion that is every bit decadent as it is dangerous to those forced to endure it. But the carnage candy is most likely what drives the curiosity factors of those reading this review, and on that account I say the movie delivers exceptionally to stomach-churning gore and enthralling brutality, albeit in meticulously measured doses that keeps their impacts punctuating, each time they flourish frenetically on-screen. For my money, it’s the book-ended sides of this movie when this aspect is at its very best, between an arrow being shot through a highly sensitive area during an opening sequence that wastes no time literally hooking its audience into the engagement, and an all-out buckets of blood battle during the rivetingly on-edge climax, which quite literally obscures the familiarity of any of our surviving characters. Most appealingly, the brutally unapologetic gore is rendered with a commitment of consistency to practical effects work, inscribing wincing discomfort to severing slices and lingering limbs in ways that constantly ground them in the necessary realities to spawn believability, and it renders everything that is fiercely fun about the genre, even in much smaller doses than we’re typically used to, proving that Morgan isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, even if she prefers to preheat the oven before letting audiences feast on frenzied finale. The performances also go a long way to growing the characterization accordingly, with naturalistic portrayals from each of the four main actors that inscribe lived-in depth to the dynamics of each of these couples. For my money, the most satisfying of these opportunities easily stems from Alex Roe, whose disarming charisma and inadvertently offensive ignorance penetrates like the sharpest knife cutting dark and deep, as well as Maddie Hasson, whose initial earnestness for vulnerability and sexual discontent eventually gives way to an evolving resiliency and conniving intelligence, making her not only an ideal protagonist, especially in how she approaches conflicts more strategically than typical female horror protagonists that we’ve been saddled with, but also vitality as the representing moral compass in so many of these taboo situations that drive the movie’s discomfort.

NEGATIVES

On the side of diminishing returns, “Bone Lake”, like so many other slasher thrills of the contemporary age, does feature with it a major twist at the tail end of the second act, which cleverly deconstructs everything that we’ve known to that point, but the only problem is that it’s easily detectable as quickly as the movie’s ten minute mark, on account of some clumsy writing that inadvertently shows its hand too early and often. Without spoiling anything, I will say that certain characters have impossible knowledge that they would only attain in one logical possibility, especially since it’s not shown them conveying this knowledge anywhere throughout the many pocketed interactions, and while some people might not immediately notice this as a glaring red flag to character integrities, I found it an example of the movie feeling too smart for its own good, in turn telegraphing its biggest moments by its inability to work out the kinks in a tightly compressed script that speculatively can only go so many uniquely original directions. On the subject of that script, the film is also plagued by a repetitious and even contrived sequencing that stalls some of the pacing during what should be its most seamlessly smooth moments, making me wish that Morgan had the commanding hand in writing that she did throughout a presentation that is stylishly sleek. Part of the problem is certainly in so many of these scenes echoing one another, deducing the 90-minute runtime to consequential padding that should be alleviated on the editing room floor, but also one requiring a deep suspension of disbelief towards an experienced couple with the inability to even talk with one another, in order to resolve surmising speculation, and it all results in too much lost momentum to maintain emphasis in the urgency of the stakes, even with so much titillating sex, drugs, and manipulation that shouldn’t require such tedium. Last but not least, while the horror of the movie is reserved responsibly in ways that allow it to maintain freshness to its suddenly intrusive appeal, I do wish there was more influence in it during the inferior second act of this movie, especially in that the movie goes so long without it that I practically forgot that this even was a horror movie, in the first place. Showing the masked killer at least once more, or further elaborating on the archived articles that the characters stumble across, could’ve also drove the speculation in the movie’s over-arching mystery, but instead the horror is relegated to the beginning and ends of the movie, and for horror hounds seeking frequency in results, they will require a bit more patience to famish before they feast.

OVERALL
“Bone Lake” is a hot and heavy sexually seductive dip into provocative waters for Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s directorial debut, exploring twisted temptations inside of the fidelity of couples, in ways that equally inscribe laughter and tense situations. While the pairing of sex and horror here isn’t entirely ideal, with a tediously repetitive screenplay that keeps the latter of that combination at a firm distance, it’s held together by a charming cast that wholeheartedly commits to Morgan’s self-aware sensuality, solidifying an erotic embodiment that is here for a good time, even if not entirely for a long time

My Grade: 7.3 or B-