The “blaxploitation’ genre of the ’70s is making a return with the
mid-week release of New Line’s Halloween offering Bones starring
Snoop Dogg. Like most of those ’70s flicks, this one is garnering mixed
reviews.
By far, the best one comes from the country’s most prestigious
newspaper.
Stephen Holden writes in today’s New York
Times: “One way to judge the relative quality of a horror movie is
by examining its vision of hell. Just how original and how hellish is
it? By that standard, Ernest Dickerson’s Halloween-ready scream fest,
Bones, ranks high. …In exalting the very worst of humanity,
Bones, displays a special glee and an unusual density of scary
imagery.”
Other reviewers are less ecstatic. “The movie is over the top
and garish. Its transitions often are sloppy and crude. But it
brandishes its excesses like a loud, retro suit,” writes Gene Seymour in
Newsday and the Los Angeles Times.
“You’ll laugh at
Bones a lot more often than you’ll be scared by it, assuming you’ll
be scared at all,” comments Jay Carr in the Boston Globe.
Chris
Vognar in the Dallas Morning News says that the movie “gets
revved up as soon as it gets gross, funny and stupid.” He then adds:
“Actually, it’s pretty stupid from the start.”
But Lou Lumenick in the
New York Post can’t find much redeeming worth in Bones at
all, writing: “There isn’t much meat on Bones,” a silly, boring
supernatural thriller that squanders a potentially interesting premise
and the rapper Snoop Dogg in his ostensible starring debut.”
And Jack
Mathews in the New York Daily News can’t find much to like about
it either. Bones, he comments, “is horror ordinaire, with a
joked-up finale that feels like an apology for the somber nonsense that
precedes it.”
