Bone Lake Flirts With Temptation but Never Entices

Bone Lake

★ ★ ½

Bone Lake is a thriller that explores temptation in a relationship already being tested—with metaphors so on the nose even Pinocchio would be jealous. This is a film with a great deal of missed opportunities with intriguing ideas that, had they been more thoroughly explored, could have succeeded at making us feel uncomfortable while entertaining us at the same time.

The movie starts with a violent pornographic scene. A man and a woman are running naked and terrified through a forest. They’re being hunted by a man with a crossbow. We see the man take an arrow through his appendage and the woman is shot from behind. They both die and are later posed in a room to mirror a piece of artwork.

None of this matters to the story at all, so why are we subjected to it?

Maddie Hasson as Sage nad Marco Pigossi as Diego
© 2025 Bleecker Street

Because this is a passage from Diego’s (Marco Pigossi) work-in-progress novel that he’s reading to his girlfriend Sage (Maddie Hasson) as she drives them to a vacation getaway. It’s clear she’s not impressed with his work and tells him he’s playing it safe and that he shouldn’t be afraid to push boundaries and be daring. It might be a little unfair of her to say, but we don’t know how much he’s already read to her before. The whole point of the opening sequence is to shock us and establish his insecurity that she doesn’t believe in him.

When movies begin this way, it’s a sign we’re on troubling, unstable cinematic ground.

Diego and Sage arrive at the mansion they’ve rented for the weekend. It seems irresponsible—he’s just quit his job as a community college teacher, and she’s covering them financially while he attempts to write his version of the “Great American Novel.”

Andra Nechita as Cin and ALex Roe as Will
© 2025 Bleecker Street

As they unpack, another couple shows up, Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita) for their weekend stay. Apparently this rent-a-mansion screwed up and double-booked the weekend. After an all too quick chat, both couples decide that a quick meet-and-greet is enough to decide sharing the house is a good idea.

That “on-the-nose” I mentioned earlier? It’s no accident that Cin’s name is pronounced the same as sin.

Even the casual filmgoer will know where this is heading. Will and Cin will attempt to push the boundaries of Diego and Sage. They play small psychological games, asking probing questions and finding little ways to get under their skin. Eventually, this leads deep into sexual temptation and jealousy—not a good combo when you’re sharing a house with strangers.

Alex Roe as Will
© 2025 Bleecker Street

Will and Cin do their best to exploit Diego and Sage’s weaknesses. They cue in on the obvious cracks in the relationship and find a way to pit them against one another. The problem is, the script makes this far too easy, dousing the flames of jealous intensity. In this way, the jealousy plays out onscreen with subtle tension rather than the visceral, psychological deep dive the script sets up for. It’s a string of missed opportunities.

Cin is certainly a temptress, and Will is an instigating saboteur. This isn’t new territory at all, and the film seems uninterested in breaking any new ground. The 2022 Danish film Speak No Evil and its 2024 remake masterfully showed how one nefarious couple can break down and slowly destabilize another. The mind games were deliberate and flawless—a commentary on how we sacrifice our safety and well-being for the sake of pleasantries. Speak No Evil is five-dimensional chess, but this film is a ho-hum game of Candyland.

The actors have lines to say and things to do but little freedom to explore the depth of their situation. It flattens the performances in a premise that should have been mesmerizing.

Maddie Hasson as Sage
© 2025 Bleecker Street

We observe the psychological horror but never experience it deeply, which cheapens the impact. It’s like being told our hour’s up five minutes into a therapy session. The film trades real horrific drama for a Jerry Springer daytime soap-opera trope. It’s passable, but leaves a heap of potential on the cutting room floor.

There are flashes where the movie hints at something deeper—a glance here, a pause there—but they’re fleeting.

Whether you see the twist coming at the end or not depends entirely on how vested you are in the story. When it unfolds, you’ll be profoundly unsurprised—so much so you won’t even kick yourself for missing it.

Bone Lake wants to be a sexually charged dark psychological drama but is too timid to get beneath the flesh and into the marrow of the story. It plays more like a dark episode of The Young and the Restless than a disturbing cinematic journey. What we’re left with is something shallow and unsexy—kind of like a breakfast buffet in a strip club. Those aren’t real eggs, and this isn’t real drama.