BONE LAKE - Mark Reviews Movies

Bone Lake, Bleecker Street

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 2, 2025

Bone Lake does tell—or, maybe, warn—us that its story will inevitably become a grisly, violent thriller with its opening scene. In it, a naked couple is chased through the woods and killed by an unseen pursuer, and there's just the slightest bit of some storytelling beyond the bloodshed here. At one point, the guy lets go of his partner's hand, basically putting his survival above hers or even their shared existence as a couple.

That subtle moment is actually more informative of the story screenwriter Joshua Friedlander puts forth than the gruesome fates of the two characters from the prologue. It's not a tale of other characters being stalked and hunted, or at least, it's not until the third act, when we realize it kind of has been that the entire time and the movie almost feels obligated to return to the empty promise of the introduction.

Instead, this is more a relationship drama about Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi), a seemingly happy couple whose bond is actually quite fraught and is about to be put to a test. If not for the fact that Friedlander and director Mercedes Bryce Morgan tell exactly where this story will go from the very start of the movie, there might have been some reason to care about these characters, worry about the state of their relationship, or wonder if, maybe, it's time for them to reconsider the whole thing.

Because the movie plays its hand early, however, it has little patience for actually examining these two and their connection in any meaningful way. The script keeps teasing us that things must not be as they seem as Sage and Diego go about their silent resentments with, quiet frustrations towards, and unspoken doubts about each other. We're just waiting to see when and how the filmmakers will finally render all of that drama irrelevant with a big, blood-soaked climax.

The most significant issue here, perhaps, is the inclusion of two other characters—another romantic couple—in the drama. They're Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita), who show up at the same manor Sage and Diego have rented for a romantic weekend getaway. It's an unfortunate coincidence, everyone agrees, that the two couples were somehow able to rent the same house on the same dates on different websites, and if Friedlander believes we also will somehow fall for that excuse, he has either forgotten that or never intended for the movie to open the way that it has.

Anyway, the dynamic between Sage and Diego is intriguing and filled with some dramatic potential. He was, until recently, a teacher at a community college who wrote in his spare time, but the itch to make it as an author has overtaken Diego. He quit his job and plans to get started on his first novel once this vacation is finished. Meanwhile, Sage is starting a new job to compensate for the fact that there'll only be one income for the two of them for the foreseeable future. She says she supports her boyfriend in his dream to become a successful author, but we can see a flicker of doubt whenever the subject arises.

The game here is that Will and Cin, who have known each other since childhood, can perceive all of that and more about the other couple, too. After agreeing that the two twosomes will stay at the mansion together unless things become uncomfortable, the four characters start dividing and confiding in each other in different ways. Cin (short by Cinnamon, by the way) can tell that Sage isn't happy about Diego's decision to quit his job and might not be entirely convinced of her boyfriend's talent as a writer. Diego tells Will that he plans to propose to Sage, while also being quite naïve when Cin asks him to look for her glasses as she just wanders around in a towel.

It's difficult to explain why all of these interactions with Will and Cin fall flat here without giving away too much about what's revealed in the third act. Then again, it's tough to believe that any of those revelations could come as a shock, considering how the prologue puts us in the mindset to only expect one outcome for this tale and how everything that follows here is colored by that sense of anticipation. It's not as if the characters are subtle about their intentions or what they're actually doing, anyway, and instead of embracing some notion of dramatic irony, the movie just plays this game in a straightforward manner. It becomes frustrating how far ahead of the characters we are in terms of the real deal within this story.

If one can ignore what's right upfront from the start, Bone Lake does feature some sincere performances from Hasson and Pigossi, as well as some playful ones from Roe and Nechita. The conflict between Sage and Diego feels authentic, too, in the way neither is willing to speak it aloud, lest the happy relationship they both are counting on collapses in front of them. That the movie announces its intentions right away, though, means it's interested in exploring that dynamic only so far.

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