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For those seeking a horror-slasher movie that provides guilty pleasure while making you wince, it's likely Bone Lake is on your interest. The latest chilling feature from director Mercedes Bryce Morgan arrived at movie houses on the third of October with an outlandish setup and a provocative name to match.

Note: Plot details below for the conclusion of Bone Lake.

A Combination of Levity and Darkness

With a name like Bone Lake and an initial moments featuring characters running stark naked through the wilderness—only to be targeted with a crossbow in vulnerable spots—it's safe to assume there's ample levity in the film. Even, the film's ending, which portray the main couple battered and bruised yet giggling hysterically side by side, have a feeling of macabre comedy.

You would need to seek out a cause to chuckle over, too, if you went through what the character Diego and the character Sage experience in Bone Lake. A pair full of partnership troubles from the start—poor dialogue, unsatisfying sex, an disproportionate load of economic duties, etc.—their relationship is strained when a second pair, Will and the character Cin, gatecrash their couple's getaway.

A Morbid Change

At first seeming to be a clash of contrasts between the two pairs—Sage and Diego are uncomfortable and blue-collar, whereas Cin and Will have a wealthy, luxurious lifestyle and are seen kissing on all available spots—becomes sinister as the getaway goes on. Cin and Will play on Diego and Sage's doubts in their relationship. They tell untruths and talk about the protagonists, claiming to know about an infidelity and additional personal issues.

The doubts burst in the most monumental way possible when Diego and Sage discover that Will and Cin aren't just here at Bone Lake accidentally: they are the owners and have been enticing pairs to the estate in order to coax them to stray on their significant others. For what purpose? Because Cin and Will are truly related by blood. Following their taboo romance was found out by their parents and they were forcibly separated unwillingly, they resolved to punish all others (including their relatives). Since the world turned against them only for their desired relationship, then they'll oppose the society. Will and Cin's aim is to hold up a mirror to all the duos they finally end up murdering, in an attempt to demonstrate that their bond is just as valid (or invalid) as the connection of these other couples they try to split.

Unforeseen Resilience

However, what Cin and Will overlook is that Sage and Diego, in spite of their poor dialogue with one another, do care for and adore each other. It just took having a deadly duo try to end their relationship and kill them to realize it. If that sounds dark, it is not presented that way. Bone Lake's style is more camp than actual fear.

The story concludes with Diego and Sage working together to evade Cin and Will's murderous intentions. What's interesting is that while, at the beginning of the movie, you sense a vast divide in the relationship between Sage and Diego in relation to Will and Cin, by the end, Bone Lake reverses it around. Will and Cin separate to hunt Diego and Sage, but Diego and Sage are communicating better by this point. They collaborate to slay the character Will with a cutting device. They then attack Cin, who meets her grisly end at the floor of Bone Lake's lake—but only after Diego retrieves the marriage symbol meant for Sage that the character Will had swiped and presented to the character Cin.

Consequences

In the aftermath of their two killings, smeared with gore and flesh, Sage and Diego rest side by side on the edge of a craft. Paradoxically, this is the most intimate they've been since the start of the story, since all their romantic problems have been exposed for the two to see, and all they have to hold onto are their battered and bruised selves. To affirm their new closeness and profound insight of one another, Diego moves closer to slip the wedding ring on the character Sage's hand and, when she turns to inspect it in the light, the two begin to laugh.

It's easy to see why: When, Will asked for marriage to Cin, it was a perfect, loving scene. Whereas the character Diego does the same for the character Sage, they've only escaped from a terrifying experience. But still, the character Diego's proposal to the character Sage is not grounded in falsehoods, only the realization that they've come out of the most terrible experience of their existence and, after all that, they still want to spend the rest of their life as one.

Creator's Perspective

But, as filmmaker Mercedes Bryce Morgan explains, the ending doesn't necessarily mean a fairy-tale ending for Sage and Diego.

"When you experience that situation with someone where you endure a murderous bloodbath, how can you come out of that? What do you do as a human being? And so I wanted to capture all of the instants there together where it's this elation of 'thank God' and 'are we receiving what we've longed for, but what the fuck just happened? How in the world do we do at this point?' Plus that sinking in of the situation of 'what are the implications for us {now|today|from