Fantastic Fest 2024: Bone Lake, Bring Them Down, What Happened to Dorothy Bell?

We’re closing out our coverage of an excellent Fantastic Fest this year with a trio of very different films, all worth seeing when they find their way to your area in theaters or on streaming.

The best of the three is Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s wonderfully twisted “Bone Lake,” a film that feels like a European relationship drama for about an hour before exploding in remarkably bloody chaos. It’s a movie best appreciated the less you know about where it’s going, so I’ll be very delicate with spoilers. Suffice it to say, the set-up is another AirBnB debacle—have films like “The Rental” and “Barbarian” taught us nothing? In this case, a seemingly average couple named Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Sage (Maddie Hasson) have rented a remote mansion on the titular Bone Lake. He’ll work on his erotic fiction; they’ll work on their relationship, which has entered something of a rut. Shortly after getting to their beautiful weekend home, Diego and Sage are startled by the arrival of another gorgeous couple named Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita). The couples decide to make the most of the double booking and share the massive space. Anyone who’s seen a movie knows that can only end poorly, but “Bone Lake” doesn’t go exactly where you think it will.

Most of “Bone Lake” consists of relationship games between the couples, but it becomes clear that Will and Cin are trying to poke holes in the delicate fabric of Diego and Sage’s relationship. Whether it’s Cin asking for help from Diego while only wearing a towel or Will showering naked outside for Sage to catch him, they’re playing off their sexuality, giving “Bone Lake” an erotic charge that’s rarely seen in American cinema anymore. There are times when Morgan’s film feels like the kind of ‘80/’90s thriller that has basically disappeared off the landscape. Adrian Lyne would probably dig it.

“Bone Lake” shifts when secrets are revealed, turning the final act into a doozy of a bloodbath. All four performers, the only cast in the film, do excellent work making this impossible situation feel real. A final twist that explains a bit of a motive for what happens feels unnecessary, but there’s enough simmering tension under this “Sex, Lies, and AirBnB” to keep it together.

Far grimmer drama unfolds in Christopher Andrews’s vicious “Bring Them Down,” a showcase for two of the best actors of their generation: Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan. Despite a few bolts of very Irish humor, “Bring Them Down” is an oppressively glum piece of filmmaking, a story of two men who appear to be on a collision course with life-shattering violence.

Abbott is the center, playing a man living in the Irish countryside who does little more than tend to his flock of sheep and care for his ailing father, played by the legendary Colm Meaney. When someone asks him why he hasn’t been around lately, his reply is to ask incredulously where he would even be seen. There’s nothing out here but work and sleep. That is, until someone starts messing with the sheep, which our hero traces back to a neighboring clan, especially a troublemaking son, played perfectly by Barry Keoghan. When sheep end up stolen, missing, and murdered, a battle for power and territory simmers to a boil.

The relentless tone of “Bring Them Down” feels a bit monotonous to this viewer, but it’s worth seeing just for the work of Abbott and Keoghan. I’ve long thought Abbott to be one of his generation’s most consistently nuanced actors. Still, Keoghan steals this one, proving that his range is greater than the “troublemaker” role he’s sometimes stereotyped into. This part could have been just tics and drama, but Keoghan finds a vein of melancholy, a sense that he doesn’t want to be a part of this violent, threatening world anymore. He’s so riveting that the thin plotting of “Bring Them Down” fades away; we’re simply watching an actor fully disappear into his character.

Finally, one of the few found footage films I could see from this year’s program is the effective “What Happened to Dorothy Bell?”, a study of mental illness and buried trauma. Despite its short runtime, there’s a sense that this might have worked better as a longish short film, or it needed more world-building and narrative bulk to maintain as a feature. Still, the scenes that work in “Dorothy Bell” are chill-inducing enough that all fans of the found footage genre should check it out.

Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows) is coming to terms with the actions of her grandmother when Ozzie was just a child, including a vicious, unexpected attack. Why did Dorothy, a seemingly normal librarian, do what she did? And are the urban legends about Dorothy haunting the library at which she worked true? Ozzie sets up cameras in the haunted library to get answers while director Denny Villaneuva Jr. plays with various forms of found footage. He cuts together home recordings, police footage, security cameras, and even what look like YouTube clips into an impressive assembly, one that reminds us that our highly surveilled lives can be more easily unpacked than ever.

“What Happened to Dorothy Bell?” has some cleverly constructed sequences, none better than a Zoom therapy that gets incredibly creepy. Meadows gives an impressively committed performance at the center of it all. Some sequences feel a bit too slow-burn, as if we’re trying to stretch a short film concept to 80 minutes. But it’s one of the FF films this year that makes me most interested in seeing what its filmmaker does next.