Bone Tomahawk ★★★½

IT TOOK Craig Zahler almost 30-odd years to discover his true calling.

The American was an animator, writer and musician before directing his first film, Bone Tomahawk, in 2015.

He has only made two other films – Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete – but already has a cult following.

His films are wonderfully written and specifically paced to build empathy with the characters.

They are also disturbingly brutal, featuring moments of violence that will leave you gasping.

Bone Tomahawk is three quarters a a traditional western and one quarter a shocking horror film.

The prelude gives you a small indication of the type of violence but doesn’t full prepare you.

It’s the 1890s in a small frontier town called Bright Hope.

One of the female townspeople and a deputy sheriff are taken by members of a strange tribe of cave-dwelling Native American Indians.

The sheriff, played well by Kurt Russell, heads off in pursuit, accompanied by the kidnapped woman’s husband (Patrick Wilson), a gunslinger (Matthew Fox) and another deputy (Richard Jenkins).

For the next hour we follow the group as they converse, argue and slowly bond. There are crumbs of wry humour courtesy of Jenkin’s character and, to all intents and purposes, it’s an old-style buddy western.

But Zahler has no intention of making something that will leave a slight impression with a standard response.

Hence, there is a very bloody outcome when the men eventually reach their quarry.

If you can stomach the horror, you will be thoroughly entertained, albeit still a little perplexed as to the jarring nature of this mash-up of genres.

Watched on Blu-ray.