Only one asset was half-way tolerable and that was attractive Sherry Thurig who at least tries to give her character some personality. Everything else fails and not in a small way, we're talking colossal failure here.
The Bonesetter is a cheap-looking movie, camcorder video taping is much more professional-looking than the slipshod photography here, the lighting is often too dim and drab in colour, editing is all over the place in the parts that are supposed to be scary and the special effects are all very half-hearted. The music has some occasional mildly effective parts but that's far outweighed by the majority of the time that it's loud, repetitive and over-bearing.
When it comes to the story, that's where The Bonesetter falls down massively. The whole story-telling is literally a load of tired clichés re-hashed with pedestrian pacing and complete lack of scares or suspense to boot(because the whole movie is so predictable), making the relatively scant 72-minute length feel longer by seemingly twice as long. None of the characters are interesting and some are annoying, the villain is also far too obvious and just a walking cliché with no development or menace. The acting is terrible from all but Thurig, with Lloyd Kaufmann underused and going through the motions, Mark Courneyea making a near-broken marionette less wooden and Anne-Marie Frigon showing very little emotion.
A vast majority of the blame for the colossal failure of The Bonesetter lies with Brett Kelly, who stars, directs and writes and he fails at all three. His lead performance is stiff and whiny with the character making stupid decisions that don't fit within the situation. His direction makes past-prime action stars less flabby, and the script throughout The Bonesetter is so senseless and awkward-sounding that it feels like there wasn't one written for the movie at all until literally at final stages. Overall, a terrible movie with only Thurig as a redeeming merit. 1/10 Bethany Cox
