Sightlines · reception

How Bone Tomahawk was received

2015 · S. Craig Zahler · Bone Tomahawk on Sightlines

The arc

It got a small limited and VOD release in 2015 and earned good reviews but little box office. Word of mouth has since made it one of the defining cult horror-westerns of the 2010s, and it's the film that put Zahler on the map.

What’s debated

Fans split over whether the long, slow trek is patient character-building or just padding before the ending, and over whether one character's line separating the cave dwellers from Native peoples really defuses the film's frontier-savagery imagery.

Its footprint

One scene of sudden, extreme violence late in the film is the reason it keeps turning up on 'most brutal kills ever' lists and in 'I wasn't ready' warnings to friends. Richard Jenkins' rambling, sweetly dim deputy Chicory is the character everyone quotes.

Where it stands

A word-of-mouth cult favorite and a standard pick for 'westerns for horror fans.' On Letterboxd it's an 'oh, you HAVE to see this' recommendation.

Did you know? Kurt Russell made it right before Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight and wore the same big moustache and beard in both.