BONE LAKE movie poster | ©2025 Bleecker Street

Rating: R
Stars: Alex Roe, Maddie Hasson, Marco Pigossi, Andra Nechita, Clayton Spencer, Elaine Reis
Writer: Joshua Friedlander
Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Release Date: October 3, 2025

BONE LAKE is an erotic thriller, an entry in the horror subgenre of predatory couples who get off on terrorizing other couples. It’s reasonably entertaining, although the heroes are so dense and the villains so overconfident in their appeal that we’re not sure whether or not it’s intended as an example of yet another genre: parody.

We start out seeing a naked man (Clayton Spencer) and woman (Elaine Reis) running hand in hand through the woods, being shot at by mysterious attackers armed with crossbows. Later, we see the couple’s corpses posed together.

Next, we meet Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi), who are in the middle of a cross-country move. Sage is forsaking her career as a freelance reporter for the financial stability of a job as an editor, so that Diego can quit being a community college teacher and pursue his dreams of being a novelist.

Although they are tight on funds, Diego surprises Sage with a stop for a weekend at a secluded mansion he’s rented for the weekend. Their relationship is a tiny bit tense. Sage isn’t as enthusiastic as she’d like to be about Diego’s writing, even though she assures him she’s happy about her change in employment; Diego worries that Sage doesn’t really want to give up journalism, and that her liking for occasional privacy may mean that she prefers pleasuring herself to having sex with him.

While it looks like the weekend may be pleasant after all, Sage and Diego are startled by the arrival of Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita). Will and Cin claim that they have booked the mansion for the weekend – the mix-up is surely the result of the listing appearing on multiple sites. Since the premises are so enormous, Will suggests the two pairs share the place for the weekend.

“Do you like to play games?” Will asks. He and Cin certainly do. We can just about suspend disbelief for the first act. Then Will does something that nobody in reality would tolerate. Diego, however, is persuaded to go along with helping the seemingly distressed Will out of his problems, and our ability to take this seriously goes out the proverbial window.

There are hints that BONE LAKE is meant to be a black comedy, starting with the fact that the title is referenced as a naughty pun. The attempts at seduction by Cin and Will are on a soap opera level – can our heroes be tempted into cheating? – but rate as more tone-deaf than alluring.

The third act progresses to slapstick splatter (splat-stick?), with a final shot that indicates that, yes, we are meant to laugh. This is fine. However, it’s an issue earlier on, when the goings-on don’t rise to the level of being funny, without being grounded enough for us to invest.

Joshua Friedlander’s script lays out a lot of possibilities, then provides a motive that, while outsize, is in keeping with the rest of the film. Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan has a lot of fun with composition and lighting and produces some decent jump scares.

Hasson plays Sage as so level-headed that we don’t fear that she’ll succumb to Will’s overtures – again, it’s hard to know if we’re meant to be alarmed or not by this prospect. Pigossi is sweetly tentative and credibly troubled as Diego. Roe and Nechita handle their characters’ personality swings with verve.

BONE LAKE is readily watchable, just not plausible. As to whether it’s erotic, that depends on whether you can be turned on while you can’t believe the context.

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