Crew
Director/Screenplay – Michael Donovan Horn, Producers – James V. Bulian & Miles Doleac, Photography – Nathan Tape, Music – Armaan Biviji, Visual Effects Supervisor – DJ Shea, Production Design – Lindsay Anne Williams. Production Company – Artist Vodka Films/Historia Films.
Cast
Jeremy London (Sheriff Vince Cronin), Elena Sanchez (Deputy Jo McCully), Miles Doleac (Craig Meredith), Richie Montgomery (Charlie ‘Rooster’ Riggs), Laura Cayouette (Nadine Walsh), Atrial Clark (Ray Brixton), Alli Hart (Jenny Saunders), Jared Bankens (Wes Doyle), David Kallaway (Mick Tobin), Escalante Lundy (Paul Howard), Elise Greene (Audrey Neiman), Betsy Borrego (Katy Howard), Madison Wolfe (Carrie), Rashad Collier (Tim)
Plot
A group of counselors partying at Camp Marigold are slaughtered in their sleep, seemingly by the legendary boogeyman known as Bone Face. Investigating, Sheriff Vince Cronin and Deputy Jo McCully follow the tracks of the killer and find the Bone Face costume abandoned outside an all-night diner. Inside are seven diners and three staff. They realise that one of the persons inside the diner is potentially the killer. While the state troopers block off and search all routes around the area, they keep the diners and staff held inside. As they do, secrets come out and suspicions are pointed in every direction. And then other bodies start to pile up.
Bone Face was a directing/writing debut for Michael Donovan Horn who had previously written the scripts for actor Miles Doleac’s directorial outings The Dinner Party (2020) and Demigod (2021). Doleac co-produces the film through his Artist Vodka Films production company and plays the role of the Iraq War veteran among the suspects.
In its prologue, Bone Face feeling like it is going to be a standard Slasher Film set-up with a summer camp setting, partying counselors, and then a legendary boogeyman that is reputed to haunt the area appearing and killing all of them. The surprise is then that the film jumps track and becomes something quite different – essentially a whodunnit that contains all of the characters at a single location (a diner) and has sheriff Jeremy London trying to determine which of them is the killer. The pivot works quite naturally. Thereafter, bar a few scenes at the end, the film remains contained inside the diner as the two police officers interrogate the seven diners and three staff members.
Michael Donovan Horn delivers a tightly wound whodunnit thriller. It is a show that is carried by some excellent performances. Everybody across the board is good but standouts are Jeremy London, an actor who has been stuck in the B movie trenches for too long, who slots into the role of the sheriff with great ease and is surprisingly good; Miles Doleac as the troubled veteran; and Richie Montgomery who is all braggadocio and bluster as an aging biker.
The script rides a series of strong and well written peaks and troughs of tension that manages to swing suspicion onto everybody present (including even Jeremy London’s sheriff at point). The denouement is solid, even if it is that feels as though it has two or three more twists than the really needed (I started losing track of the whys by about the second one). All in all, Bone Face is a solid little film that everyone involved has good reason to be proud.
Trailer here