#271 -- Bone Sickness (2004)

Director: Brian Paulin
Rating: 2 / 5

This review is going to be a little bit different than my others, because I've decided to try out a new rating system. Instead of giving movies that typical x / 5 rating, I'm going to give this one points in different categories and see how it does. We'll see how this goes, and how I feel about it at the end, and maybe I'll have a new way of rating the movies that I watch.

Bone Sickness is a 2004 movie directed by Brian Paulin, and it's about my favorite horror movie monsters--zombies. What's interesting about this one is that it strays from the stereotypical radiation and/or government experiment gone horribly wrong scenario. As every other reviewer will tell you, it's obvious that Paulin is a fan and loves what he does. He tried really hard to make this work, but it just didn't. I've got to applaud him for trying, though, because it really did have potential. Where this movie fails is the story, because it's so drawn out and disjointed that by the end, you won't care anymore.

It centered on Alex and Kristen, a married couple going through a rough patch in their life. Alex  had some bone disease for which there was no known cure. He was very sick, and it put a very obvious strain on their marriage. Thankfully, they had a friend (played by Paulin) who worked in a morgue and had access to dead bodies. He made some homemade food for Alex, made from the meat and bones of dead bodies. Also, he may or may not having been killing people to get ingredients. But this homemade remedy did more harm than good, as it had Alex shitting/puking worms and maggots; and then he'd turn around and eat whatever he barfed up. Talk about ew. Meanwhile, for whatever reason, corpses were rising from the nearby cemetery to wreak havoc. This remedy also gave Alex the desire to eat human flesh, so there were zombies everywhere.

It's obvious from the first scene that this is a low budget movie. It looks like it's a home movie, but at the same time, it's definitely not the worst I've ever seen. That being said, I do believe that most of the budget was spent on the special effects. There was definitely plenty of gore, which I think was the main purpose of the movie. There were drawn out scenes of zombie madness that bordered on annoying. For a minute, it's cool. The gore--though the effects were cheesy--was good. But after fifteen minutes of nothing but a zombie massacre, it tends to get monotonous. The story as a whole really made no sense at all. My biggest question is this: how did they think to feed Alex corpse bones? Was this based on any real medical knowledge, or where they so desperate that they were willing to try anything--even the most radical and nonsensical things? It was never explained, and I really think that the characters (and the writers, perhaps) pulled the solution out of their asses. The reasoning behind the zombie uprising was also vague and weird. It apparently had something to do with some goblin creatures who fed on the corpses. They were angry about Alex stealing their food, so they...decided to let the bodies rise? I'm not sure, because those characters used such exaggerated supposed-to-be-scary accents that I couldn't understand what they were saying. So I honestly have no idea.

The idea was interesting. I liked that it was different than what we're used to seeing in zombie movies. But the rest of the story made no sense at all and seemed to have no real purpose. It was mainly a gore-fest, though I could tell that Paulin was trying to create and deep and meaningful story. I don't hate him for trying, but it just didn't work out for him. I feel that, maybe, with a little more attention to detail within the story, that he could have made a really great movie. But as it is, the thing made no sense. By the end, I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, and I had no clue what the fuck was happening. The ending seemed like it belonged somewhere else. The last few scenes were on some road, with some army grunts (who looked like kids dressed like army men for Halloween--complete with the camouflage face paint) running around; add in some overturned cars, and you've got one messed up ending that makes no sense whatsoever.

Rating

Cinematography - 3 points--while it was obviously low budget, it's not the worst attempt I've ever seen, so I'll give it some props.

Storyline - 2 points--it definitely had its issues, but I really liked the basic idea. It was different and certainly deserves some credit, even though the majority of it didn't make sense.

Gore - 7 points--It wasn't lacking in the gore department, which is always good. There was one scene that was truly disturbing and disgusting, and it was the most memorable of the whole movie. However, the effects weren't the greatest, and some of the gore scenes were too drawn out.

Characters  - 5 points--the acting was actually a lot better than I expected it to be, which was good. But the characters really weren't developed as well as they could have been. I really didn't care about any of them, even the guy who was dying.

T & A - 3 points--there weren't any real sex scenes. There was on masturbation scene, and a bathing scene--that's all I remember. The masturbating scene was way too weird, and who wants to watch a chick bathe, anyway? There were some tits here and there, but it wasn't anything too memorable.

Overall score -- 20 / 50