‘Boneyard’ (2024) Movie Review - What the Hell!

Based on the West Mesa murders, Asif Akbar's Boneyard is supposed to be a serial killer movie. According to Wikipedia, the real-life case involved "the killings of eleven women whose remains were found buried in 2009 in the desert on the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States." What happened to the killer? He was never found. There were, instead, several suspects, though none of them were arrested. Sounds scary, right? With a subject like this, Boneyard should also be chilling, right? Unfortunately, no. This Asif Akbar crime thriller is neither terrifying nor thrilling. You know the movie is going to be terrible when you hear "Under Your Feet" over the opening credits. The mood instantly becomes cheesy, and from here, Boneyard only becomes more and more clumsy.

Akbar's filmmaking has the rotten soul of a serial killer: It allows butchering of coherence. Scenes seem to run randomly - they are not organized to tell a proper story.  Rather, all those sudden cuts to flashbacks or flash-forwards make you dizzy. Perhaps the filmmakers, at some point, must have figured out they have made (or are making) an awful movie. Hence, Akbar might have told his editor, R.J. Cooper, to mess up everything so that the audience could spend the entire time connecting the various scenes instead of feeling disgusted or bored with the film. Our mind is initially busy slotting events under different timelines, though once you get a grip on the material, you are left with only one thing: Getting your senses numbed by this cheap serial killer mystery.

Mel Gibson, as Agent Petrovick, is supposed to be one of those "cool cops" who are highly confident about their skills, but the actor tries too hard to impress and to make matters worse, we often forget he is even present in the film. Now and then, Gibson's solemn voice talks about serial killers or grief. This solemnity puts you to sleep. It's not just Gibson; the other actors also fail to register their presence. That's because Akbar isn't interested in anything or anyone. His shoddy dud uses scenes not for dramatic purposes but merely to dispense information. The scenes don't have any tone - the filmmaking is devoid of excitement. Boneyard is made by someone who luckily got access to a camera, a cast, and a budget. The story doesn't illuminate the real case or the characters. Then again, what can you expect from a film whose idea of "intelligent comedy" is to have a character call someone Judas before facing betrayal? The most (unintentionally) funny thing about Boneyard is that it has the audacity to dedicate itself to the victims. The filmmakers use these victims as a springboard for creating their incompetent production. All you really end up learning from Boneyard is that on the streets of Albuquerque, sex is readily available. Just bring your car.

Final Score- [1/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times