Blaxploitation is back on screen in Bones, a hip-hop horror movie co-starring power-gal Pam Grier and rapper/actor Snoop Dogg.
Directed by Ernest Dickerson and written by Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe, Bones tells a contemporary story set in a demon-haunted slum in New York.
As is common in ghost-monster-horror movies, there is a flashback, in this case to 20 years earlier, to set up the scary stuff. Turns out this 'hood was a thriving scene two decades earlier when the drug lord Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg) ran the show and looked after "his people" like a Mafia don.
But he was murdered one day by rivals. Today his ghost -- and others trapped in a murky demon world -- haunts the dilapidated mansion that once housed his crime operation.
As only happens in genre pictures, the naive son of a now successful businessman who was involved in that nefarious murder decides to open a hip-hop nightclub in the mansion.
The youth (Khalil Kain) and his siblings and friends are, intriguingly, a cross-cultural blend of white, black and blended. That is acknowledged in the movie and then forgotten just as quickly. No real social points are raised in Bones. In any case, this group of goodies must clean up the joint.
Typically, they do the most ridiculous and even stupid things, such as go in the basement! How many horror movies do these idiots need to see before they learn that they should never go in the basement! They do anyway and begin to unleash the demons. Some of them will die.
In an uncomfortable waste of talent, Grier shows up as a psychic-medium. She also has a connection to the past. Other characters, such as Michael T. Weiss' crooked New York cop, do too. All will figure into the blood-splattered, exceptionally violent, special-effects-driven climax.
There are memorable horror effects beyond the usual decapitations and body mutilations that these movies offer. They're memorable like a nightmare, not because they're innovative. Bones is nothing if not empty of new ideas.
Taking a cue from The Exorcist, a demon Dogg-person spews all over its victims. But instead of the green vomit-slime that Linda Blair made famous 30 years ago, it's a flood of live maggots. That's what passes for original here. Bones is not only painfully predictable, it is vile.
As for Doggy Dogg, he looks like a freak in his retro gangster clothes, including a long leather coat. One of the few funny lines in the flick pops up when some oaf insults him as a second-rate Shaft.
As a movie, Bones should be so lucky. It's so far behind the Shaft legacy it can't even step on its coattails. If this is blaxploitation 2001, it's doomed.
(This film is rated R)
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