It’s wild that a double-booked vacation rental remains such an unexplored frontier after Zach Cregger’s Barbarian. However, it wasn’t the first to tell a scary story in the dark corners of a shared space; the 2022 film capitalized on the dread and the “WTF”-inducing weirdness of Airbnb in ways no other horror film had. That said, it quickly spirals into a premise much deeper than two people forced to share a bed and breakfast. Bone Lake, meanwhile, tackles that concept from every weird angle... but it might also reveal how little there actually is to explore.
Unlike Barbarian’s genre-bending premise, it’s a little easier to guess what’s in store here. Bone Lake strives to bring back the splashy erotic thrillers that were equal parts self-aware and titillating, and it does fulfill that promise right off the bat. It all begins with a naked couple running terrified through the forest, trying (and eventually failing) to escape from their sadistic, crossbow-wielding hunter. The cat-and-mouse chase is a twisted cross between Naked and Afraid and The Most Dangerous Game: when the man abandons his girlfriend to make a real run for it, he catches an arrow in the nether region, a killshot rendered in extreme, bloody close-up. His other half, meanwhile, trips and impales herself on a spiky log. It’s campy and gratuitous, a pitch-perfect subversion of the hypersexual cabin in the woods thrillers Bone Lake is drawing from. If only the rest of the film had the courage to commit to the bit.
