Bone Tomahawk

Back in May, Magnolia Pictures picked up S. Craig Zahler’s horror-western Bone Tomahawk starring Kurt Russell, Peter Sarsgaard, Jennifer Carpenter and Timothy Olyphant, and the announcement came with this description of the film:

Bone Tomahawk follows an outlaw who unknowingly leads a band of cannibalistic Troglodytes into the peaceful western town of Bright Hope. When the monsters kidnap several settlers, including a rancher’s wife, a small rescue party consisting of the injured rancher, the sheriff, his aging deputy and a strong-willed gunslinger, journey into hell to try and rescue them. They soon find themselves in dark unknown territories where savage inbreeds armed with the ultimate weapon leave no hope of survival.



While talking to Sarsgaard during an interview for his upcoming film, Lovelace, he called Bone Tomahawk, “Alien meets The Searchers.” The connection to the 1956 western is obvious, but Alien? By definition, cannibalistic Troglodytes would translate to cave people who eat human flesh. Nothing extraterrestrial there, but Sarsgaard’s sci-fi reference does open the door to the possibility that these monsters may not be of our world.

But, of course, there’s always the chance that his connection had nothing to do with involvement of ETs and perhaps just the concept of a group in small confines battling a monster of sorts. Either way, between the cast, what we know of the story, and the fact that Sarsgaard noted, “[S. Craig Zahler] is the most focused person I think I’ve ever been around,” Bone Tomahawk has the potential of offering up a notably fresh form of horror.