A couple deals with personal issues, along with another couple double booking a rental mansion in Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s annoying misfire, Bone Lake.
Diego and Sage are a couple on edge. While they seem happy, it’s obvious there are cracks; he’s quit his job to be a novelist, she’s picking up the slack with notable pain behind her smile. They’ve booked a sprawling mansion on a lake for a sexy getaway. All good? Too bad another pairing, Will and Cin, a little more freewheeling and open compared to the tight original couple, have also seemed to book the mansion. What to do but try to share? But an opening sequence with two nude folks chased and murdered in the woods tells us danger is looming.
As the film is now set up, we wonder where this will lead. Aspects of the house indicate some weird sex cult? Barbarian monsters in the basement based on that “double booked Airbnb” flick?Or even supernatural (a Ouija board is on hand)? Perhaps a Speak No Evil situation, given that we have the same couple dynamics, with one couple tormenting the other? I was genuinely intrigued where it would head, even if it seemed obvious. I was hoping the “yeah, this is what’s happening” was a misdirect.
Sadly, all my intrigues led to nothing but annoyance. Bone Lake is Speak No Evil, either version (for the record, I like both a great deal), but “Sexy” and stupid. I wonder if screenwriter Joshua Friedlander found the one exec at Bleeker Street who hadn’t heard of the “horror of manners” and convinced him it was a new idea.
I guess that’s a bit of a tell, more than normal, but it’s an obvious turn from the get-go. “Sexy is in quotation marks. Yes, there are plenty of hot young bodies, cleavage, and a smattering of nudity (less than expected with the “erotic thriller tags on advertising). And plenty of psycho-sexual drama. Masturbation, bodies in the rain. Several taboos. But, Speak No Evil 2024 has a Beast Mode James McAvoy. He’s far sexier. And I’m saying that as a straight guy. The attempts to make something “sexy” in Bone Lake come off silly, earning scoffs with the overwrought and sheer awkward directness.
There is nearly a dynamic between the couples and their inhibitions or lack of. Like Speak No Evil, we have a tight, troubled couple, further on edge with the sparky, anything-goes couple pushing their buttons. The series of microaggressions is a lot of “hey loosen up”, obvious plays at sexuality, and unbelievable set-ups and lies. This sort of film is dependent on “how much will they take for politeness,” but it gets ludicrous, holding back just for the movie to continue.
As the show unfolds, some actions and lines make little sense from what is seen, especially in they say one thing like they know a truth, but immediately act as if they don’t. There is a specific scene towards the end that plays like the script got jumbled, but they went with it anyway. This happens often.
The acting can’t save the annoying script and reveals. No one is believable in any way. At the center is Maddie Hassen as Sage. She spends the whole film with an annoying little smile. The type our face we get when we think “don’t smile, don’t smile.” Her line readings are confusing. She’s unreadable, in a bad, “interesting choice here” way. She was similarly “taking me out of the movie” strange in Malignant. Her other half, Marco Pigossi, gives a baffling run as well, mostly in large reactions, big gestures, and wide-mouthed responses. He looks lost. The other couple, played by Alex Roe and Andrea Mechita, are so obviously lying with “middle schooler tells you they aren’t on their phone when it’s literally in their hands” readings of their machinations and lies, it’s a wonder the half doesn’t immediately see through it all.
However, the film is nearly saved by a complete change of tone in the final 15 minutes. I’ll give it that. The climax has an over-the-top energy that the rest of the film lacks due to general sluggishness. It awakens everyone, moving from a bland camera use (besides a handful of annoying movements meant to make you uncomfortable, but I found them annoying) to a great look and design. It’s as if someone else came in and took over. It’s an odd turn after the over-seriousness of the first 75 minutes. It needn’t go all out, but keeping the whole more in this style, leaning into the cheese, making it more overtly comic, like the finale would have worked wonders, moving from the lack of self-awareness.
Bone Lake? More like Bore Lake! Ahem. Pun aside, Bone Lake is an annoying, lesser version of a story made much better twice in the last five years. Its twists and turns are obvious, save one that is so out of left field it makes the movie a comedy, which it does become for the final fifteen minutes. Just watch Speak No Evil (which does function as a dark comedy of manners), either one, instead. Since this wants to be sexy, watch McAvoy in the new one.