Morgan has fun with some stiff competition in ‘Bone Lake’

Cinema | October 6th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

The multiple meanings of the title location in Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s “Bone Lake” cover the sex and death spectrum that will flummox Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Sage (Maddie Hasson) as soon as they discover their well-appointed getaway rental has been double-booked to Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita). Well before the age of Airbnb and Vrbo, storytellers have enjoyed toying with the possibilities of frustrated travelers who must figure out how to navigate the inconveniences of overlapping dates on the calendar. And despite showing up in romantic and screwball comedies as well as other genres, horror has been a regular landing spot for the conceit: “Barbarian,” “Gone in the Night,” “Holistay” and “Double Booked” are a few of the recent movies that put a twist on the durable set-up that owes a cinematic debt to loose thematic variants and variations going as far back as James Whale’s spiritual touchstone “The Old Dark House.”

Morgan, working from a script by Joshua Friedlander, pays stylistic homage to the vibes of the lurid 80s and 90s erotic thriller, leaning heavily into the cheese and cheesecake with a wink and a curled lip. Temptation, jealousy, kink, infidelity, commitment and horniness swirl in the air as Will and Cin play head games with their comely new friends. Morgan tightens the screws with an effortlessness that would be at home in a big-budget studio-backed movie with well-known stars. That said, the relatively little-known Hasson, Nechita, Pigossi and Roe combine as a formidable foursome game for the increasingly over-the-top complications that pay dividends for horror hounds ready to see some contusions and lacerations.

During the ride, Morgan shifts gears from sexual electricity to fight for survival. Revealing one major and messed-up twist late in the game, the filmmaker weaves together the macabre with the surprise violation of a cultural taboo that feeds into the world-building lore of the haunted setting. For those who have embraced the unhinged events to this point, disbelief has long been suspended (in a good way). Outside the spiral of dread, the frustrations of Sage and Diego as a couple working hard to preserve their relationship in the face of career and life-related challenges is completely believable and grounded in language familiar to anyone who has maintained a long-term romantic partnership.

One of the most satisfying aspects of “Bone Lake” falls into the category Alfred Hitchcock sometimes called “icebox talk.” For an exquisite little stretch, Morgan teases the audience with dangling threads edited in a way to introduce doubt in the mind of the viewer as to whether Will and Cin “will sin” to successfully seduce the new arrivals. Morgan might have pushed even harder with the cunning hypotheticals (despite one particular car scene being near perfect). Of course, aficionados of the weird and the sick might have desired even more libidinous explicitness to accompany the violence. Like most American genre films, “Bone Lake” chooses raw gore over raw flesh.

“Bone Lake” world-premiered at the 2024 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, where it was one of the most crowd-pleasing experiences I enjoyed. In my original notes, I described the movie as a dirty cocktail blending straight-to-video energy with trashy Lifetime melodrama that is as funny as it is untethered from reality. At the screening, the promotions team handed each guest an elaborately decorated cookie shaped like a severed digit complete with engagement ring, perfectly capturing the film’s tongue-in-cheek, or perhaps finger-in-cheek, attitude.

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