The Bone Garden

The Bone Garden is pretty bad. I'm certain that all involved went into it with the best of intentions, but the ingredients determine the outcome despite intentions.

Tracie Savage as Alice Hardy's, world starts falling apart when a new neighbor moves in. Even in this briefest of summaries the movie lacks interest.

The acting is stilted and pedestrian across the board. The physical setting is uninspiring. The film has a mid-day made for television movie feel to it. The script by Mike Gutridge is contrived and unimaginative.

Mike Gutridge is also the director. He has two or three movies under his belt as writer / director. He seems to have hard of the maxim that doing the same things must produce the same outcome. He might look at his output with a more critical eye and see if he can avoid some of the issues which keep arising.

A site, AMC Scene, which is sort of how to make a horror movie 101 site, lists the following,

10 Elements Every Horror Film Needs

A Memorable, But Frightening Menace. ... Clear Rules to Live By. ... Plenty of Characters Who Could Disappear at Any Moment. ... The Element of Surprise. ... A Backstory That's Key to the Monster/Villain's Purpose. ... Proper Theme Music. ... The Possibility for a Sequel.

Unfortunately, Mike Gutridge doesn't really address any of these adequately.

You know how sometimes you are hoping that a character ends up dead early on. That's exactly what I felt watching this movie. Unfortunately the main character rarely dies at the start. Even her insane, nymphomaniac best friend was an improvement. Needless to say I did not finish this beyond lousy movie.

The Bone Garden is a tough film to review. On one hand, when looked at for pure cinematic value, it is dismal. It's a cheaper than cheap thriller that would make the Asylum give it a hard pass. A lot of the cast are known for their various roles in the Friday the 13th franchise and there is a reason none of them ever went any further and most have all but disappeared: they can't act. Add a completely abysmal script and kid-with-his -first-camera level directing and you have a film that no one should ever have to see. But then, on the other hand, this film is unintentionally hilarious in a way few films have been since The Room. The overacting, fhe laughable dialogue, the clueless directing and editing...by the halfway mark I was beginning to wonder if they were trying to be this bad. So, as an actual film this is a complete trash heap but as a midnight movie with a crowd that's in on the joke, it has a future.

Well, for a thriller then this 2014 movie titled "The Bone Garden" wasn't actually all that bad. Wait, at least it wasn't all that bad right up until the last quarter of the movie, then everything just fell apart. And I have to say that the last quarter of the movie totally ruined everything that writer and director Mike Gutridge had managed to accomplish up to that point. And I will actually go as far as to saying that the change of events and what happened in that last quarter of the movie was definitely some of the worst I've seen in a movie in a long, long time.

The storyline told in "The Bone Garden" was actually fairly entertaining, and it had that whole 'who did it' vibe going on, and director Mike Gutridge actually managed to make a wholehearted and entertaining movie.

But then he shot himself in both feet with what he opted for in that dreadful and ghastly last quarter. That whole plot twist was just so outrageously bad that it totally killed off the movie. It was so bad that I think it will be imprinted into my memory for a long time to come.

The acting in the movie was adequate, though it was very clear that it wasn't award-winning material that you are in for here, when you sit down to watch the 2014 movie "The Bone Garden".

Ultimately, then "The Bone Garden" is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on, especially not so with that abysmal last quarter of the movie.

My rating of "The Bone Garden" lands on a mere two out of ten stars. I would have rated it a five stars actually, but then that horrible last quarter rolled on to the screen and it just knocked the movie down so hard. Of course, I am not going to ruin it by revealing what happened, you'll just have to sit down and see for yourself - or actually, you better not.

This is like watching a movie a High School kid made for a grade, and he got a C-. It was pretty much too awful to watch but it was like a train wreck you just couldn't stop. The characters were so stiff especially the next-door neighbor when she meets him in the school and he tries to look menacing. Lol.