BONES
The horror genre generally reflects the deepest anxieties of the audience. In
the case of Bones, that fear might be that there will never be another
decent movie made for African-Americans. To give director Ernest Dickerson
credit, he does try to give this idiotic pastiche some street cred, touching on
such relevant themes as the flight of the black middle class from the inner
city and the fate of mixed-race children. There's also Snoop Dogg as a
pimped-out bookie murdered in 1979 who returns from the dead when some kids try
to open a dance club in his shuttered-up old tenement digs. He wreaks vengeance
on those who did him in a tiresome Freddy Krueger way that's as episodic as
Scary Movie and mostly unintentionally funny, with a haunted house
spewing maggots, a demonic dog eating human flesh, a self-restoring cadaver
à la The Mummy, and Pam Grier as a spiritualist intoning lines
like "Some holes can't be filled! Some hungers can't be satisfied!" Well, no,
not if all there is to chew on are bones like this. At the Hoyts
Providence 16 and Showcase cinemas (Seekonk 1-10 and Warwick only).
Issue Date: October 26 - November 1, 2001
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