Crew
Director – Mercedes Bryce Morgan, Screenplay – Joshua Friedlander, Producers – Jason Blumenfeld, Joshua Friedlander, Mickey Liddell, Pete Shilaimon & Jacob Yakob, Photography – Nick Matthews, Music – Roque Baños & Ben Cherney, Visual Effects – Mr. Wolf (Supervisor – Peter Vazquez), Special Effects Supervisor – John Baker, Special Effects – Fexco Corp., Makeup Effects Design – Bill Johnson, Production Design – Kendra Bradanini. Production Company – Liddell Entertainment.
Cast
Maddie Hasson (Sage), Marco Pigossi (Diego), Alex Roe (Will), Andra Nechita (Cin)
Plot
Sage and Diego rent a luxury house for the weekend. She is an editor, while he has recently dropped out of work to write a novel. Unknown to her, he has brought a ring and is planning to propose to her during the weekend. They are startled by the arrival of Will and Cin, another couple who say they have also rented the house for the weekend. They decide the best way to deal with this is to agree to share the house. They two couples connect and socialise. Will sees Diego’s ring and Diego confesses his plans to propose. Diego is then startled and upset when Will takes the ring and uses it to propose to Cin. There are growing sexual tensions as Cin comes onto Diego, while Will twists words that Diego has said around to set Sage against him.
Bone Lake is being billed as an erotic thriller and a throwback to the era of Basic Instinct (1992). In a baffling decision that must only say how shabby any of the competitors were, it even made it onto Esquire magazine’s The 19 Sexiest Movies of 2025 list. IN A FUCKING PIG’S EYE. I saw not only Basic Instinct when it first came out but watched and wrote up a substantial number of the erotic thrillers that followed in its wake. I haven’t seen all of the ones that came out but if I can find good copies of those I haven’t I will happily cover those too.
All I have to say is that if Bone Lake were a 1990s erotic thriller, it would have been ridiculed for its utter lameness. There is a great opening with a man and a woman running naked through the woods being pursued. The woman is shot with a crossbow and the final shot is of a crossbow bolt going through the guy’s dick. This holds promise as something with bite. However, this is promptly killed a few minutes later in a scene when Maddie Hasson and Marco Pigossi have sex and we see her riding him – only she is wearing a bandeau that covers her breasts. When something aiming to be an erotic thriller comes with such a ridiculously obvious level of tameness that its lead actress won’t even get properly undressed, what possible reason can you have to want to possibly invest in it?
And yet that is it in terms of Bone Lake’s steaminess – all we get from there is a medium wide shot with Andra Nechita dropping a towel in a doorway while turned away. There is a scene with Maddie Hasson masturbating in a bathtub but again what she is doing remains hidden beneath the soap suds the entire scene. This isn’t an erotic thriller, it’s a work that can barely even make it across the PG-13 line.
What we do have is quite a lot of sexual tension and people talking about sex or why they’re not getting any. But that doesn’t make an erotic thriller, it’s a film with people discussing sexual attitudes and relationship issues. That maybe and one or two leaves from the recent Speak No Evil (2022) about a regular couple forced to cohabitate with another couple that prove just too friendly and constantly cross boundaries. There’s another whole level about trust, deceit and the two strangers pressuring the regular couple into testing the boundaries of their relationship. But again all that that makes for is a regular psycho-thriller.
These scenes are okay-ish. I did quite like the scene where Alex Roe steals Marco Pigossi’s engagement ring and uses it to propose to Andra Nechita. In truth though, Alex Roe and Andra Nechita are characters that have no more depth than being antagonistic forces designed to push buttons and rend the regular couple apart. The film proceeds to a routine climactic fight to the death.
Bone Lake was the third feature film directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan who had previously made the horror film Spoonful of Sugar (2022) and the thriller Fixation (2022).
Trailer here