Erotic thriller/slasher movie Bone Lake is now in theaters, and director Mercedes Bryce Morgan discussed a number of topics during a new interview with Collider, including the movie's graphic sex scenes, and the shocking ending.
Major spoilers follow.
The movie begins with two couples, Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita), double booking an Airbnb and deciding to keep their reservations and spend the weekend together (never a good idea).
It turns out that Will and Cin actually own the property, and have been luring couples there in order to play on their insecurities and seduce them into cheating on each other... before brutally murdering them. Oh yeah, they also happen to be brother and sister who have been involved in an incestuous relationship for many years.
In the end, Sage and Diego manage to turn the tables on their attackers, first dispatching Will with a chainsaw, and then ensuring Cin meets her end at the bottom of the titular lake after being diced by a boat propeller.
Morgan was asked about the movie's sex scenes, and whether the cast had any reservations.
"I think it's just that everyone was down. Because this movie script, it's something where you could be sent as an actor, and you go, 'They want me to do what?' Or, 'Oh my God, what are they asking of me?' Most of the cast are people that we worked with before. For example, Maddie [Hasson] was in my first movie, and then Alex [Roe] and Marco Pigossi both had worked with the producers before. Then Andra Nechita is very new. I also was like, 'I need someone to commit as Cin. Who is down to clown?'"
The filmmaker also explained how the climactic boat scene came together.
"I always thought that the boat scene at the end would be the hardest, and it's funny because the entire time we were on set, I kept telling people, 'Guys, we don't have enough time to shoot this.' It’s a two-page day, and we had some other six-page days, and I'm like, “This day is crazy.” Because you get stunts and you get water and everything is happening. And the funniest thing happened, that was the worst but best thing: we had an actual storm when we were having our fake storm. It's funny because one of the producers came up to me like, 'Mercedes, look, this is a Jurassic Park level of water that we're getting for free. This is amazing!' But then it rained too much and we were in a foot of water, and people just started slipping and sliding within the span of five minutes. Our stunt person slipped and broke their finger, and then we dropped a $20,000 lens in the lake, and we're like, 'Shut it down! We’ve got to shut it down.' And so we ended up reshooting the boat scene in a soundstage in L.A. But it was awesome because I got more time to do it, right? So I was like, 'This is awful,' and then I'm like, 'Hell yeah!'”
Finally, in a separate interview with Polygon, the filmmaker touches on the movie's bizarre ending, which sees Sage and Diego laughing together while covered in the blood of the people they just brutally murdered.
“If you go through that situation with someone where you go through a murderous bloodbath, how do you come out of that? What do you do as a person? And so I wanted to capture all of the moments there together where it's this euphoria of ‘thank goodness’ and ‘are we getting what we've always wanted, but what the [frick] just happened? What the [frick] do we do now?’ And just that set in of reality of ‘what does that mean for us now?’”
“A couple’s romantic vacation at a secluded lakeside estate is upended when they are forced to share the mansion with a mysterious and attractive couple. In this darkly hilarious and seductive horror story, a dream getaway spirals into a nightmarish maze of sex, lies, and manipulation, bringing terrifying secrets to light and triggering a bloody battle for survival.”
As you might expect, Bone Lake has been rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout, and some drug use.