Ernest R. Dickerson's African-American horror movie, BONES, never manages to be
scary or funny. But with a maggot-vomiting dog and with lots of slit throats
and severed heads, it does accomplish significant grossness. Some movies are so
bad that they become good. BONES -- I'm sorry to report -- isn't one of them.
It's just relentlessly bad.
In the opening, two rich, white kids in a six-figures sports car come to the
ghetto one night to score some drugs. When things don't go as expected, they
hide in a house so obviously haunted that it might as well have a big, bright
neon warning sign over the front door. In no time at all, they become dog food
for a black dog with bright red eyes. The house turns out to be the final
resting place of one Jimmy Bones (Snoop Doggy Dogg), an unsavory character who
was murdered in the 70s. The movie's dialog -- "Some holes can't be filled, and
some hungers can't be satisfied." -- is as ridiculously awful as the movie's
outlandish ghetto garb from the 70s, when much of the story is set. The plot
concerns Jimmy's resurrection in order to kill his killers.
The one thing that the movie kills is time. It performs one miracle along the
way by making an hour and a half turn into what must have been at least four.
BONES runs 1:32. It is rated R for "violence/gore, language, sexuality and
drugs" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
Copyright © 2001 Steve Rhodes
out of 4
