Collecting a cast of wonderful character actors including Martin Freeman, Jacob Tremblay, and Taylor Schilling, Queen of Bones instantly shot up to “must see” status. The stills gave a mysterious, alluring quality seeming to promise intrigue or, at the very least, eerie atmosphere to spare. Unfortunately, Queen of Bones lacks the skeletal structure to matter. Its general narrative has been done before and much better. For a supernatural horror/thriller featuring such a stacked cast, I expected better.
Structurally, the film has been split up into eight chapter-chunks with an epilogue. Cutting it up in this way makes little logical sense, since this contributes absolutely nothing story-wise. Set in 1931 Oregon, Queen of Bones follows twin siblings, Sam (Tremblay, Wonder, Room) and Lily (Julia Butters, The Fabelmans, Gray Man), attempting to investigate the mysterious death of their mother. They discover a strange spell book, and their zealot father, the violin maker, Malcolm (Freeman, The Hobbit, The World’s End), goes out of his way to conceal the truth from his curious children.
While the characters are interesting, director Robert Budreau does little to give them much depth. The only intriguing element of the story involves the spellbook. Flashes of nightmarish visions and the occasionally creepy occurrence do not a strong horror movie make. Requesting more meat on the bones of a movie titled Queen of Bones may sound silly, yet that is exactly what it needed to evolve beyond its effective atmosphere. Certainly, the performers are game for whatever may be thrown their way. When it all amounts to so little, how can we care?
Sam and Lily deserve better than to try thwarting their father’s constant temper tantrums. The film occasionally makes some interesting biting comments on femininity and female puberty, or tries to throw in another character (Orange is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling in a completely wasted role) to keep it interesting. There just does not seem to be enough effort made. The action barely happens, only finally attempting to pay off the slow-burn nature by throwing the audience a proverbial bone less than fifteen minutes before an abrupt, unsatisfying ending.
As much as I wanted to love Queen of Bones, it takes altogether too long to get to the point. Its characters suffer by being barely developed, and the father especially is aggressively unlikable. Tremblay has more success in his role in underrated festival favorite Cold Copy; here, he feels underused. With atmosphere to spare and an excellent cast, Queen of Bones fails to live up to its potential as a gripping period-piece chiller. The filmmakers, it seems, bit off more than they could chew from these malnourished bones.
Queen of Bones debuted at 2024’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
