Bone Tomahawk (2015, S. Craig Zahler)

🤠🌵🏇🚶🩼🧌😀 Star power. I like a good western, and there aren’t many, but this is one of them. It’s a minimalist character-driven period western that only veers into survival horror in the final act. A posse of eclectic characters on the trail of (as far as I know, entirely fictional) mute, cannabalistic, cave-dwelling kidnappers, who kill with ghost-like savagery, like proto-Predators, so it’s okay for the audience to view them as straight-up soulless video game monsters (or at least, that’s certainly the hope). Somewhat clumsily distances itself from the problematic tropes of older westerns, but doesn’t go as far as re-writing history. Another horror director who wants to do his own music. Luckily there isn’t much, except the oddly out-of-place operatic end title music. Character performances drive most of this movie. The lack of Hollywood-style over-the-top sound effects and music during the scary bits somehow makes it even scarier. Can’t decide if I liked it or loved it. It’s an indescribably odd duck. (PlutoTV.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Tomahawk