Little Bone Lodge

“It’s said that mother is the name for God on the lips of all children,” comes the narrator’s voice as the camera drifts through a remote stretch of the Scottish highlands. Quoting The Crow may not exactly raise expectations for Matthias Hoene’s most recent venture into horror, which screened in the Frightfest strand at the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival, but set your worries aside. This is a great little horror thriller and his best work to date.

It’s founded on a strong script by Neil Linpow, who also stars as Jack, one of two brothers on the run in the aftermath of a robbery. The other is Matty (Harry Cadby), who arrives at the farmhouse, where most of the action plays out, in a panic after their car has gone off the road. Jack is badly injured and at risk of bleeding out. He’s tremendously lucky that the owner of the farm, Rose (Joely Richardson), happens to be a trained anaesthesiologist. Or then again...perhaps he’s not.

Rose is one of those deeply practical people who seems to be able to turn her hand to almost anything. She manages the small farm pretty mush single handed. Young Maisy (Sadi Soverall) is an immaculately dressed, well behaved child who looks as if she’s never done a day’s work in her life. Her father (Roger Ajogbe) is a wheelchair user who can barely move by himself and struggles to communicate. He was disabled, Rose will explain, as a result of the same accident which claimed the life of her little boy, Ollie. The family has been through a lot and although she very quickly clocks what the brothers are up to, she’s not an easy person to to intimidate.

In recent years we’ve seen quite a few films about criminals getting into trouble by picking a target who turns out to be tougher than they expected. Rest aside, this is not just more of the same. What Rose does with a shotgun halfway through will have you re-evaluating everything that has gone before, and from then on it’s anyone’s guess as to who will survive, whilst you may also find that you keep changing your mind about who you want to survive.

That’s not to say that it’s difficult to form strong attachments to these characters. Quite the contrary: you may find yourself getting attached to any or all of them. Finely attuned performances really elevate the film. Linpow himself is a standout, attracting sympathy to the person whom you may initially find most difficult to like, whilst Cadby is superb as the troubled younger brother, really capturing the tragedy of a man who is essentially sweet natured but can go rapidly and violently off the rails, and is terrified of being institutionalised (as he has been in the past) because of it. The complex relationship between the two brothers is beautifully observed, whilst a tender bond develops between Matty and Maisy.

Towards the end, a fresh plot development threatens to knock the film off balance, and Hoene struggles a bit with the pacing as multiple threads come together, but there’s still plenty of tension. Richardson clearly relishes the chance to get stuck into a meaty role like that of Rose, and this will appeal to film fans far beyond the horror crowd. Whilst you may see a few of its twists coming, there are plenty more, and more importantly, the acting makes them matter.