A western horror film. I’ve rarely seen a genre mashup work as well as this one does. It’s an impeccable western with great dialogue and authentic period detail. It’s also horrifying in exciting and disturbing ways. I really enjoyed this one.

The movie opens with a couple of outlaws who slaughter a group of sleeping travelers out in the desert. They stumble onto what looks like a burial site and are quickly attacked. The violence is so fast and brutal it shocks before you even have a chance to understand what scared you.

One of the outlaws escapes and ends up in a small town where we meet out cast of richly drawn characters. There’s Sheriff Franklin Hunt, played by the Kurt Russel. I have a feeling that Russel chooses his roles based on how wild his facial hair is going to be. Here he sports an epic mustache. He’s a calm and sensible sheriff who has a habit of shooting criminals in the leg before they have a chance to run. His deputy is a forgetful old man named Chicory, and their chemistry is one of the most enduring parts of this movie. I love the warmth and affection these two have for each other.

We meet Arthur O’Dwyer, played by Patrick Wilson, he recently broke his leg falling off a roof and is bed ridden but determined to be the man. His wife is Samantha, played by Lili Simmons, the doctors assistant who loves her husband in spite of his stubbornness. She is smart and capable and calls it like she sees it. It’s also fun that she isn’t the standard western female character. She’s not a saloon singer, or school marm, or prostitute.

She is brought to the jail to take the bullet out of the outlaws leg. When the town wakes up in the morning they find that Samantha, the outlaw and the deputy are all gone. They’ve been abducted by a tribe of mute cannibals. It’s up to the sheriff and a posse to rescue their people from a vile fate.

The script for this movie is excellent. The dialogue is full of rich period detail. Everything from the cadence of speech to the word choice feels so lived in and of its time. I loved it. It’s also full of great character moments that add depth and meaning to each moment. There’s a really brilliant little touch when a called named Brooder, played by Matthew Fox, spends most of the film bragging about his talent with a gun and the number of Native Americans he’s killed. However when he has to kill a wounded horse, he has a long pause when he chokes back tears and fights a flood of emotion. It adds so much to these characters and undermines the archetypes of the genre that they’re playing with.

I loved the way it plays with genre conventions especially with its characters. The braggadocios Brooder gets teary over a horse. The cowboy hero riding to save his wife has a broken leg and gets left behind by the posse. The Sheriff who is a stalwart of justice is powerless when faced with the overwhelming power of the enemy. It challenges the viewer and provided so many wonderful surprises for m. I love a movie that can surprise me.

The violence is fast and brutal. It is gruesome at times and very hard to watch. There’s one famous moment in the climax that I definitely didn’t need to see and will haunt me for years to come. It involves the cannibals killing and preparing a person for dinner. It’s nasty and ugly in its violence. That will turn most people off, but if you can stomach it, it is unforgettable.

The movie is tense and horrifying. It is hard to watch and times and a little bit too long if I’m being honest. I think ten minutes less and the runtime would’ve been perfect. That said there’s a lot to enjoy in this movie. It’s a well made genre mashup that is scary and unforgettable.

It’s currently streaming on Netflix. It’s definitely my cup of tea. A-