Summary

• Stephen King recommends Bone Tomahawk, praising its dialogue and unexpected epic quality.
• The film received rave reviews from critics and has a cult following for its uniqueness.
• Made on a small budget, Bone Tomahawk found more success in home media than in theaters.

Stephen King is surprised at how good Kurt Russell leads the surprisingly star-studded cast alongside Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, Lili Simmons, Evan Jonigkeit, David Arquette, Zahn McClarnon, Sid Haig, and Fred Melamed.

On X, formerly Twitter, Stephen King shared a glowing review for Bone Tomahawk, and he was surprised at how good it was, calling it "a low-budget Western epic" that is "well worth watching." Check out his post below:

King's full review, as seen above, reads, "I was expecting nothing but a time-er on a rainy Wednesday morning, and got a low-budget Western epic. The dialogue alone makes it well worth watching. Beware the last act, when a man is literally torn apart."

How Has Bone Tomahawk Been Received?

The Western Horror Film Is A Hidden Gem

King is far from the only one who loved Bone Tomahawk, as the Western horror film received rave reviews from critics and has a cult following of fans. Critics commended Zahler's script and direction and the cast's compelling performances, though they recognize that its slow-burn story and peculiar blend of genres, Western and horror, may not appeal to all viewers. It is likely, however, to please those looking for something out of the ordinary. In fact, as King mentions, Bone Tomahawk contains a gruesome death scene in which "a man is literally torn apart."

Bone Tomahawk has a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score from the critics and a 74% audience score.

Bone Tomahawk was made on a small budget of $1.8 million, and premiered at the Fantastic Fest in 2015, which primarily focuses on genre films such as horror. After the festival, the film was unable to secure a wide release from a major studio and instead, was given a limited release in theaters from RLJ Entertainment and grossed only $475,846 at the box office. However, the movie went on to do much better on digital platforms and video-on-demand, making $4.32 million in home media sales.

Though it performed better on home media than in theaters, Bone Tomahawk remains underseen, and hopefully, King's glowing review can entice his followers to watch the Western horror film and add to its existing cult following. Around the time of its release, Zahler's film began popping up on lists of the best horror and Western movies of the year, highlighting its genre-bending appeal. Bone Tomahawk has largely been forgotten since then, but hopefully, King's glowing review can bring it back to relevancy again.

How Bone Tomahawk Compares To S. Craig Zahler's Other Films

Zahler Has A Unique Style

Bone Tomahawk marks Zahler's directorial debut, and the gritty tone and violence of that film would return to play a large role in his subsequent projects. After his 2015 debut, Zahler directed Brawl in Cell Block 99 in 2017, which stars Vince Vaughn as a boxer-turned-drug mule who is tasked with killing a man in a maximum security prison in order to save his wife. The film, which also stars Jennifer Carpenter, is just as brutally violent as Bone Tomahawk, and fared just as well with critics. Like its predecessor, it failed to make an impact at the box office.

In 2019, Zahler directed Dragged Across Concrete, which takes his grindhouse style to the cop thriller genre. The film sees Zahler reunite with Vaughn, with Mel Gibson also playing a starring role. Dragged Across Concrete follows two cops who become involved with a dangerous professional thief after being suspended due to police brutality, and the movie features the same level of shocking, unsympathetic violence as its predecessors. Continuing a trend for the director, the film earned mostly positive reviews but made a measly sum at the box office.

* Box office and estimated physical media sales figures via The Numbers.

Zahler, as the chart above suggests, clearly has unique storytelling and filmmaking sensibilities that generally go over well with critics and audiences. These sensibilities, however, just aren't widely appealing commercially. That being said, Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete are all films that seem poised to grow in popularity steadily over time as more viewers discover them on streaming and on VOD, as King has.

Does Bone Tomahawk Show The Way Forward For Westerns?

Zahler Infuses Horror Into A Familiar Genre

For decades now, Westerns have been risky theatrical propositions. As was most recently seen with Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga, audience interest in movies about the American West just isn't there. Bone Tomahawk, however, is far from a typical Western, and infusing the genre with another, like horror, is an interesting way to revitalize it, at least on paper.

In practice, though, there's no evidence that this strategy makes Westerns any more appealing to theater-going audiences. Bone Tomahawk's poor theatrical performance isn't a promising sign, and an attempt to mix Western with sci-fi already went fairly disastrously wrong in 2011 with the Daniel Craig-starring Cowboys & Aliens. Bone Tomahawk, then, is, and seems sure to remain, an interesting genre outlier.

Source: Stephen King/X