It’s odd to see Mel Gibson as a going concern. The Mad Max star supposedly earned a spot on the Hollywood blacklist, but he’s never really gone away. There are no gaps wider than a year or two in his career. Even as people attacked him for his public statements, they often praised him for his work. Gibson was in seven films in 2022, and though they all dropped into the void, he’s still all over the place. Boneyard, his first of two films in 2024, drew a bit of attention on Amazon Prime Video.
“Who made Boneyard?” I hear absolutely no one ask. Assuming his weirdly hagiographical IMDb biography is accurate, director/co-writer/co-producer Asif Akbar grew up in Cleveland and fell in love with film early. Scroll down from that bio to see one of his greatest recent achievements, a film called Clown Motel. This one’s a slasher film about a clown-based inn that sits on Native American land. Apparently both clowns and face-painted indigenous killers attack the cast, which includes Tobin Bell from Saw and UFC champ Randy Couture. Consider it for your next bad movie night.
Boneyard Just Barely Drags Mel Gibson Into the Public Eye Again
I’ll be honest; I found Boneyard extremely hard to watch. It’s as boring as its title, but when the shabby editing and uninvolved performances did manage to grasp my attention, I had to deal with the actual subject matter, which is far worse. Boneyard partially adapts the West Mesa murders, an unsolved series of 11 linked killings of sex workers in New Mexico. The movie takes that premise and invents a generic thriller around it by borrowing gimmicks from a thousand other similar projects. Mel Gibson arrives as a jaded FBI agent, working alongside Albuquerque police chief Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. No one has an ounce of chemistry, everyone is technically a suspect, and the story is predictable. The fact that Akbar and his three co-writers used the aforementioned murders as the basis for a pointless Mel Gibson vehicle leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Cards on the table: Boneyard is only succeeding on Amazon Prime Video in a few specific territories. According to FlixPatrol, it’s currently #1 in Denmark, Finland, Poland, and Sweden, and #2 in Norway. Taking the global metrics into account, it’s actually the 40th most-watched film on the service. JustWatch estimates Amazon Prime Video’s library has around 26,300 movies, making that 40th-place position a bit more impressive. As you probably already guessed, Boneyard never made it into a theater. A few critics still managed to weigh in, offering a tepid 44% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. Hilariously, audiences were even less kind, slapping the film with a 34% positive score. It can be hard to find consensus in these things, so I commend Akbar on bringing the pros and amateurs together for once.
Boneyard is not a good film. Mel Gibson and 50 Cent both seem half-awake while the character actors struggle to sell the boring plotline. This is nothing new. A bad movie with a couple of big names drops onto VOD roughly every 15 minutes. This one really only deserves the negative reception it got because it dared to draw up the specter of several real murder victims. Say what you will about Clown Motel; at least the real-world deaths it trivializes happened a long time ago.
