Film Review: A Tale of the Bonesetter (short film) (2015)

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SYNOPSIS:

A woman and her child visit a Bed and Breakfast in rural Quebec unaware of the town’s history of child murders at the hands of an ancient Bonesetter.

REVIEW:

ok yet another short film, and yet another from writer/director Brett Kelly. I’ve seen a lot of his short films in the last year. Seems to be a prolific filmmaker. Today’s selection is A TALE OF THE BONESETTER.

This is part of a series of Bonesetter stories, a mythos in which Mr. Kelly has done at least two feature films (THE BONESETTER in 2003 and THE BONESETTER RETURNS in 2005). In this case, we are in the modern day at a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere.

A mother and her son, traveling to Toronto, are too tired to go any further. They stop to rent a room. They are met by the apparent Gypsy innkeeper, who doesn’t seem to thrilled to have a child in the hotel. He says he will only let them stay if the boy is in bed by 7 pm.

Mom, of course, argues this point. The innkeeper says “oh, you haven’t heard the stories, have you?”

He proceeds to share the legend of the Bonesetter, a story told both in present time by the innkeeper and shown in flashes to the distant past. So it’s both a modern story and a period piece at the same time.

The eponymous monster is played by Jody Haucke, who has played the same character in all of Mr. Kelly’s Bonesetter films.

I went and found the other bonesetter films and watched them, too. I wanted to see how this one fits into the mythos and universe in which Mr. Kelly established this character. I really love the short, but the features are worth exploring.

So using my special “short scale” of one to five, five being awesome, I’m giving this film 4 creepy dolls.