Bone Sickness

Bone Sickness is an obvious no-brainer from the start. With a title like that, it's likely anyone gearing up to watch the movie has certain expectations about what follows. The seasoned horror viewer might. Or rather, it should be an obvious indication, had it been a better written movie to explain the details of the sickness that has inflicted one young man (and the home-made cure appears to be a mix of ground bone marrow and ground meat of corpses) in a low-budget zombie movie that has the feel of friends who shot somewhere in a small town where permits weren't necessary.

But the gory details and probably are likely to earn this movie mention, despite their being something of an afterthought of intensity (as did the gratuitous nudity), at least according to the director in the Uncle Creepy interview that is included on the DVD. For anyone who doesn't find this a selling point, at most Bone Sickness should be watched in the company of less-than-sober friends purely for riffing entertainment.

I'll keep this review generally informal, just to get across what one would likely want to know about this film before viewing it.

First off, this film is an absolute piece of garbage by the conventional standards of mainstream cinema. It is poorly acted, poorly scripted, poorly lit (ex. green dollar store light bulbs), the story is quite weak, etc. I also warn you, this film is ultra low budget, and it LOOKS low budget. Yes, this is one of the ones that you can tell was shot on a cheap digital camera. It has that video feel and atmosphere, so don't expect even B movie quality video, as this one's Z grade all the way.

With all that said, this film is very enjoyable for the right audience. It is an absolute gem for horror fans that can look past, or even enjoy a film that has that low budget charm. If you want to watch a film that puts gore before everything else, this is a great choice. We get many gore gags throughout the first chunk of the film, and then towards the end, we get a massive (MASSIVE!) payoff of cheap but very well done splatter. The zombies are of the slow, clunky, Fulci variety, and the gore is slimy, dirty, gooey, bright, splattery, etc. It gets really gross.

To wrap this up, this is a film for low budget splatter fans who have already experienced the likes of all the classic gore films. This one is for those who want to dig a little deeper and explore cheap, low budget splatter by the lesser known and established film makers. It's for people who highly regard the classic gore (not that it's all about the gore) of a Romero, Jackson, Raimi, Argento, Fulci, etc, but can also have a lot of fun with the likes of Olaf Ittenbach type splatter flicks.

I've recently read a review of this picture that said: "The acting in this low-budget, independent zombie film is actually surprisingly good. All of the actors and actresses (who get completely naked!) actually give great performances and it is obvious that they really worked hard to make sure they delivered the best performance possible. Not only was there great acting..." I had to laugh. Look, I'm all for giving kudos where kudos are due...but the acting in this picture was not good...it wasn't even decent. Here is a problem with indie movies...people actually think this caliber of acting is good. Acting is just as important as lighting or sound...if its bad, the movie suffers. And it does...suffer.

Like I said, I'll give kudos where they are deserved: the gore and makeup effects in Bone Sickness are incredibly good, given the micro-budget it was shot with. Makeup artists should take note of Paulin's detail and execution. Excellent job in this category.

Another area this movie excels is in the nudity. I don't know how Paulin managed to get multiple cute girls completely naked...but he did, and I don't think they were strippers. Gore and nudity sells horror films...and the nudity in this film is a great bonus. Too bad the lead girl has to lay down to show her boobs...they are huge, and should have been shown with her standing up, not on her back. I suppose they must sag, and this was the most flattering of positions...but still, they are too big to not see standing up. The red head in the film had an especially nice figure, and she got fully nude...excellent! It's ashame that other than the nudity, gore effects, and makeup...the movie slouches to a 1 star picture. The camera they shot it on wasn't very good (certainly not HD), and the DP and lighting designer (if they had one) didn't know how to optimize picture quality. There were also far too many slow motion effects, which looked horrible and digitized--if it looks bad, don't do it, unless you absolutely have to. Paulin uses slow-mo nearly a dozen times...and they all look like crap.

The sound was passable, but still suffered from your typical no-budget film issues: blips, background noise jumping up and down, inaudible dialog...I don't imagine they used a boom once (I could be wrong).

Paulin...take my advice. Go to Hollywood and be a makeup artist--you'll do quite well for yourself. Don't direct pictures. Yes, they may sell because your gore and nudity are awesome...but the movies, storyline, acting, lighting and sound need a lot of work. It's really sad that you not only cast yourself as one of the leads, but it's even sadder that you're the most natural actor in the cast (which isn't saying much).

Sorry about the bad review. I think you need to drop directing, and focus on what you're good at: gore and makeup.

This movie had no point what so ever and did not make any sense at all. I personally bought this movie off ebay with the expectations of seeing a great zombie movie, Boy was i shocked. I guess you must give the guys credit with the low budget they had to work with but that gives for no reason for a dumb story, The special effects were OK but the zombies were all rotten with perfectly normal hands.. "why didn't the hands rot" If the movie made sense it would probably be OK but man my 4 year old could write a better story.. For you gore fans I'm sure you will enjoy and thats about all there is to enjoy about this movie,,I'm not by any means being degrading towards the writer and or director of this film I'm just speaking my piece of mind, I'm sure with the way this movie is advertised,there will be a lot of unhappy buyers expecting a movie with a great storyline, Personally i give this movie a 10 for gore and i give it a 2 for story...

I love horror movies and in general: Zombieflicks. Then one beautiful day I read about this film here on IMDb and it had a score of 5,3 points on the rate-o-meter. Well...I rent or buy movies after looking at this rate-o-meter because 95% of the time,I agree with it... Not this time!!!! This film is so bad that it's only.....bad. OK!There's much gore and some nudity here,but the gore is so bad made that even my brother,who's 10,can make it better. We get a lot of references to evil dead,dawn of the dead etc.etc.,but hey; Sam Raimi and Romero knew what they were doing and I think they had a lot of fun making their movies. These people didn't! Bad acting,bad editing,bad fx; in general: It's all bad. Even the nudity is bad! This movie makes "Day of the dead" look like a Oscarwinning film. 0 out of 10. Go and see "Shaun of the dead" instead!!!