Bag of Bones (2011) Review

Bag of Bones (2011) Review

I can’t seem to get away from director Mick Garris. I didn’t originally intend to cover so many of his movies and TV mini-series’, but as I delved into the cinematic history of Stephen King, I discovered Garris has directed more adaptations of his work (most of them scripted by King) than anyone else (to varying degrees of success). Bag of Bones, based on his novel, did not involve King, and is only a two-part TV movie—shorter than both The Shining and The Stand.

Pierce Brosnan plays Michael Noonan, a famous author with a loving wife, and as the movie begins, he’s just completed his latest novel. Skip ahead to when the book is launched and he does a signing session, and things seem to be going well. His wife goes across the street to buy a pregnancy test, and on her way back, gets struck by a bus and killed. This event comes out of nowhere and the impact is so sudden that it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. 

 

Mike is devastated, and suspects she was having an affair, since he was not able to get her pregnant because of low sperm count. He ends up going to their lake house on Dark Score Lake, where he tries to work on a new novel, but is haunted by her spirit, as well as others. He meets a woman and her daughter who live nearby, and discovers the woman’s father-in-law is connected to a bigger curse which explains why the spirits are haunting him. 

The best aspect of this movie is Pierce Brosnan. He gives a good performance, and is fully committed to the role. He hams it up at some parts, such as when he talks to his dead wife, but there are other points where he reaches quite intense emotional heights. At times he goes a bit overboard, but for the most part, is pretty convincing. He’s a tragic and interesting character, but unfortunately, he’s the only interesting one. The supporting characters vary from just okay to rather boring. None of them are really bad, they just aren’t as compelling as Brosnan. 

This is primarily a mystery story, but has lots of horror elements to it as well. It poses a lot of questions, such as who these spirits are, why they (and his wife) are visiting him, and what the imagery in the opening (quick shots of kids getting drowned) means. Most of these big questions remain unanswered for a surprisingly long time. It’s not until the later portion of part two that answers start coming to light, but I was happy to find that the reveals weren’t obvious early on—in fact, I was genuinely taken aback by one of the big twists—though not all of them are that satisfying, especially given the movie’s drawn-out runtime. This could’ve easily been a standard-length movie, and likely would’ve been better had it been designed that way. 

 

What’s really disappointing is, when Bag of Bones tries to be scary, it feels like it’s trying quite hard to do so, and it doesn’t work. Aside from a handful of effective jumps and creepy parts, it’s short on scares. The music is often too upbeat, too, which diffuses some of the potential scariness. Things also get repetitive in part two, with lots of scenes of Mike trying to write, or talking to his dead wife, or seeing strange things that suddenly disappear and no one else is able to see. 

Besides repeating things, many of the scary elements are recycled from other King stories. One of these is a phrase written over and over like in The Shining (there are also rotting corpses in the bath tub that are nowhere near as frightening as the one in the Stanley Kubrick film), and another big one is the basic premise of a troubled/haunted writer, which has been done in multiple other stories.  

Overall I don’t think Bag of Bones is a terrible TV movie, but it’s not very re-watchable or particularly engaging. Part one is quite slow, and part two is better but still not great. It’s worth a one-time watch for King fans, but worth skipping for everyone else.