Bone Lake

We are long past due for a moratorium on feature-length horror films with barely enough story for a short. Nevertheless, here we are in Scary Movie Month with the release of Bone Lake, yet another 90-minute dud that feels more like a mistake Blumhouse might dump in January than something deemed fit for October.

The offending distributor this time is actually the once-reliable Bleecker Street. Fresh off the pile of dung known as Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and riding a year full of decent enough ups (Relay; The Wedding Banquet) and confounding middling product (The Friend; Love Me), the company sets a new low for its 2025 slate with a story that has no business running longer than 20 minutes.

Stealing a premise that Barbarian already aced less than five years ago, the second feature from director Mercedes Bryce Morgan (Spoonful of Sugar) finds Sage (Maddie Hasson, Malignant) and Diego (Marco Pigossi, Netflix's Tidelands) discovering that they’ve somehow booked the same Airbnb as Cin (TV actor Andra Nechita) and Will (Alex Roe, MGM+’s Billy the Kid).

Rather than pay attention to this obvious red flag or any number of suspect behaviors from these interlopers, Sage and Diego play nice and cope by nervously laughing a lot. And while poor decision-making is the cornerstone of many great horror films, the level of stupidity on display in Joshua Friedlander’s script flirts with parody and only gets worse as Cin and Will clumsily bring lies, deception, and manipulation into the mix.

Along the way, occasional tension arises and one scene involving a ring may be the year's most uncomfortable cinematic minutes. But the excruciating, exposition-heavy reveals that await prove that the filmmakers aren't equipped for feature-length narratives.

Grade: D-plus. Rated R. Now playing at Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Bleecker Street and LD Entertainment)