Place of Bones

It is years after the Civil War. Pandora (Heather Graham) and her daughter Hester are living on an isolated desolate ranch. Her husband is dead and buried on a nearby hillside. They are always watching out for intruders. They find a wounded bank robber followed by more criminals looking for the stolen loot.

There is a flatness to this western. There is something missing. I couldn't put my finger on it until the final revelation. The movie keeps hinting on something sinister, but it never says it out loud until the end. I couldn't feel anything for any of these characters because I could never be sure about them. While the ending is interesting, it's a long flat wait to get there.

It was quite clichéd throughout. A desperate widow and her daughter live alone in the middle of nowhere, with no horses or obvious farming-just a grave for her deceased husband and nothing else. I thought the girl was feeding chickens, but there are no chickens to be fed; she's just scattering small stones around. One day they end up with a con man and a bunch of stolen money in their cabin. How will they survive the real bad guys who are after the con man? I watched with many questions until, at the very end, everything falls into place. This is one of those movies where you can expect a sequel. Just for the ending, my rating goes from 5 to 8.

This was a decent western, and I am not into western movies generally due to the slanted views of Indigenous Americans and the Misogynist treatment of women.

That being said, I found this one watchable, but not without plot holes and actions by the women that seems off base due to their circumstances.

The male antagonist lived up to their roles of being of the same mindset of right-wing maganuts. So I commend them on their acting chops. I didn't like any of them, so they did an excellent job.

Other than some of the antics by the daughter and two gapping plot holes, I quite enjoyed this.

Oh yeah, the twist at the end was nifty and after it came up I had an Aha moment.

I don't understand how people are giving this such glowing reviews. The acting is lifeless, it comes across as if they are actually just reading the lines. The dialogue is so cliched I can confidently say it must have been written by Yosemite Sam. The locations consist of one small house with barn and outhouse and one wooded area, that's pretty much it.

So after 60-80 minutes of not very much you get a very lazy shootout and a twist ending which really should have been the idea for the whole plot instead of just a twist.

Better acting or a better script, or better action, any of those would have raised this up to be a 5 star movie but all of them just fail.

A woman and teenage daughter are forced to defend themselves when an injured man attracks outlaws to their homestead.

This is a very B movie. The storyline is quite predictable but attempts to put a little twist on the ending. The writing, character development and overall atmosphere leaves a lot to be desired. Poor dialog, uninteresting characters and forced acting feels cringy, unnatural and much like a community theater performance. I felt myself forcing interest to finish watching it. The twist also falls flat.

This is not a film I'll be recommending to anyone unless they're just looking for something challenging to watch from beginning to the end.