Bone Lake (2025) Bleecker Street/Horror-Thriller RT: 94 minutes Rated R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout, some drug use) Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan Screenplay: Joshua Friedlander Music: Roque Banos and Ben Cherney Cinematography: Nick Matthews Release date: October 3, 2025 (US) Cast: Maddie Hasson, Marco Pigossi, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita.
Rating: *
Bone Lake is for boneheads. It’s perfectly fitting seeing as it’s populated by boneheads, four of them to be exact. Let’s do a quick roll call. We’ve got two couples, one evil and the other incredibly stupid, all of them equally insufferable. I haven’t disliked four characters this strongly since Closer (2004). The only good part of this frighteningly bad horror movie is the blood-soaked finale. It involves an axe, a chainsaw and an outboard motor. It’s cool, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to justifying the idiotic nonsense that preceded it.
The stupid couple, struggling writer Diego (Pigossi, Boogie Oogie) and his supportive girlfriend Sage (Hasson, Malignant), show up at secluded Bone Lake expecting a weekend to themselves. Diego plans to make it a “clothing optional” weekend. Their plans are derailed by the unexpected arrival of another couple, Will (Roe, Rings) and Cinnamon (Nechita, Bad Teacher), who rented the mansion for the same weekend. They’re the bad ones. They can’t get a hold of the owner and it’s 50 miles to the nearest hotel. Will and Cin propose sharing the mansion and getting to know each other. Diego and Sage go along with it. That’s their first mistake.
I’ll cut right to the chase. Will and Cin love to play mind games. It isn’t long before they start screwing with Diego and Sage’s minds, getting them to reveal deep, dark secrets and weaponizing them against the unsuspecting couple who stupidly play right into the sinister couple’s hands. It all leads up to the bloodbath I mentioned earlier.
I get what director Mercedes Bryce Morgan (Spoonful of Sugar) is going for with Bone Lake. It’s a psychological thriller that hearkens back to 70s horrors like The Last House on the Left (1972) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978). I appreciate the effort, but the film fails to do more than try the viewer’s patience. I became irritated by the utter stupidity of the good couple. Take the scene where Diego shows Will the engagement ring he plans to give to Sage when he proposes later that weekend. He then puts it back in its hiding place in front of this guy he barely knows. A smart person would keep it on his person. Is it any wonder what happens later with the ring? Sage isn’t much better going off to the store alone with Will while Diego stays behind with Cin. ANYTHING could have happened! And it does. The long and short of it is they’re both idiots and they deserve each other.
As for the performances in Bone Lake, I have this to say. They’re all bad. Nechita is like a Barbie doll brought to something resembling life. She walks and talks, but is never convincing as an actual person. Roe would make a better underwear model than an actor. He’s as wooden as Tyriq Withers from Him. Pigossi looks like he’s out of his depth playing a guy questioning his life choices. Diego quit his teaching job to work on his novel while Sage agrees to act as financial support by taking an editor job she doesn’t want. He’s also trying to resist the advances of Cin. I never believed any of it, not for a second. Hasson, looking like a clone of Florence Pugh, comes out on top but only by default. She’s okay as the sexually unsatisfied partner who uses a shower head to get herself off in one scene. It’s when she’s required to display emotion that she falters. I’m not buying her act either.
When I wasn’t irritated by the characters in Bone Lake, I was bored by it. It’s one of those movies where you keep waiting for something interesting to happen and it doesn’t. It’s just these four awful people playing some twisted mind game. It goes on for what feels like an eternity. It’s not until the last ten minutes of so when it finally gets its ass in gear. Morgan delivers a gore-drenched finale in which one antagonist refuses to die. YES! Now this I can get into. It’s too bad getting there isn’t any fun.
There is absolutely nothing positive to say about Bone Lake except that it’s marginally better than Him and we’re talking an ultra-slim margin here. It’s neither suspenseful nor scary. It’s not even interesting. It crawls at a snail’s pace. The score by Roque Banos and Ben Cherney doesn’t amplify the dread; it just grates on the nerves. The one nice thing I can say about this water-logged loser is that the chainsaw I mentioned earlier is put to good use although it pales in comparison to Terrifier 3 (you know the scene I’m talking about!). It’s still bloody cool though. They can keep the rest of Bone Lake. As a horror-thriller, it’s all wet!
