So there's a mythical monster lurking in a cave and your father vanished trying to prove it existed. Thirty years later, your mother goes looking for it and disappears too. You decide to gather a few scientist friends to mount a rescue and naturally, one of them invites a vlogger known as the Bitch Hiker. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, as it turns out, in Howard J Ford's Bone Keeper.
It does not begin badly. The opening scenes boast genuinely striking cinematography and intriguing effects work. With visual effects supervisor Giorgio Anita and prosthetic makeup effects Max van de Banks credited early on, my expectations rose sharply.
But there is also some really disorienting camera work, perhaps warning of what is to come. From that shaky foundation, Bone Keeper begins to unravel.
The characters in Bone Keeper know they are in a horror set up. They comment on the tropes, they clock the warning signs. And yet they still do exactly what they should not, most notably splitting up. Even if you're exploring caves without a legendary monster, you do not leave people behind. Honestly, the scariest thing here is the arrogance and stupidity of the characters.
Well, not quite. There are some deeply terrifying and grim scenes, credit again to the effects department and to the sound and music team, but you're rarely given enough time to fully take in what you are seeing.
Until you are.
That nest. That bone shrine. Those tentacles.
Ultimately, Bone Keeper earns few points for originality. The music and the cinematography are beautiful at times, shaky at others, but there is nothing particularly fresh about the plot. It is scary, of course it is, it is a monster horror. But it's also a monster horror that's uncomfortably aware of itself, and that makes the characters’ poor decisions harder to forgive.
To the cast's credit, they do a great job of portraying some thoroughly dislikable characters. John Rhys-Davies was criminally underutilised but I did like Nadia and Ravi, played by Sophia Eleni and Danny Rahim. Their scientific analysis, and what they uncover under the microscope, are genuinely compelling.
In the end, Bone Keeper wasn't wrapped up in a particularly satisfying way and, without giving anything away, it also made me want to scream, "That's not how things work here!"
As excited as I was to see a British monster horror premier at Glasgow Film Festival this year, Bone Keeper earns a slightly disappointed three out of five stars from me.
★★★☆☆
Scares ★★★☆☆| Love ★★☆☆☆ | Design ★★★☆☆ | Acting ★★★★☆ | Plot ★★☆☆☆
Bone Keeper will have its World Premiere on 6th March at FrightFest Glasgow, followed by a UK Digital Release on 6th April
