100It's incredible that a movie like Bones came out amidst the late-90s/early-2000s era of Horror. So much of the output around that time was focused on that Scream money, but most rip-offs didn't have the reverence or knowledge of Horror history to really make a dent in response. Enter Bones: a ghostly Snoop Dogg vehicle that has less to do with Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees than Fulci, Craven, Argento, Stuart Gordon, and Hellraiser. Not to mention the history of Blaxploitation. It's a remix of genuinely novel and underappreciated horror ideas, and then the film deploys them in such a way that you would've thought Screaming Mad George was involved. As much as it is a story of gentrification, of the police's role in introducing drugs into black communities, and the revenge sought for people who betrayed their own culture - it's also bursting with stunning aesthetic moments, sampled from Vincent Price to Clive Barker. Ever wanted to see a haunted house movie where Snoop Dogg is reanimated from the grave to seek revenge and reclaim his long lost love (played by Pam fucking Grier!)? Then look no further. Ernest R. Dickerson, director of Demon Night and Juice, and famed cinematographer for many Spike Lee classics, has a crazy brilliant idea in basically every minute of this movie, and he has the textured visual sense to back it up.It's also interesting how this released right after 9/11, which caused Horror as a genre to take another drastic turn into Torture Porn and an examination of xenophobia, because Bones is entirely focused on the landscape of the post-Reagan era, and the futile attempts to rejuvenate a ravaged community. If only we received more films like this at the time. For Dickerson to initially frame the picture as a Gothic horror-show only to burst into a more overt splatter mode by the third act, while still retaining the romanticism and nostalgia for days long gone, is exemplary. How he blends imagery of an expressionist and a realist is so exciting, and how it's all rooted in a motivation to explore such a particular historical moment. It has its quibbles, with some dated CGI (although that fits within the aesthetic parameters of the time tbh) and some weak bits of writing, but the film is still an instant favorite. Bones is gooey and gross and beautiful and basically every image has been imprinted onto my brain, and it has maggots! Watch it!
