Bones

This was about a sassy forensic scientist who solves crimes with the help of her... no, I'm sorry. That's not right. Bones is about how Snoop Dogg was a pimp, or something, named Jimmy Bones, who was wrongfully murdered by a bunch of people and now he comes back as a wisecracking Freddy Krueger-type supernatural killer to get his revenge.

Snoop isn't exactly anyone's idea of a great actor, but it's obvious that he's the main draw here, right? When we watch a horror movie called Bones starring Snoop Dogg as a vengeful pimp/demon, we are expecting to see a lot of Snoop Dogg going around killing people with his magical ghost powers. The movie practically writes itself, but for some reason the people who actually made Bones decided that what people wanted to see was an exposition laden tale of a bunch of young people who buy an old building that's haunted by Bones, only we don't really see Bones except in brief flashbacks and there's a whole bunch of boring shit about how their parents killed Bones and blah blah and then finally in the last 20 or 30 minutes Bones reconstitutes his body and kills a few people.

Am I the only one who thinks that this premise would have been cool if they did like a Sandman thing, and made Bones the main character and it's about his life haunting this building for 40 years, and maybe it could be an anthology about the spooky shenanigans at the building and he narrates each tale, or something?

It's not terrible. It's an awkward blend of horror, blaxploitation, dark comedy, & social message picture that never finds a consistent tone, but it's entertaining enough, especially during the finale. The high point is probably a little digression where Bones walks around with a talking severed head in his hand, arguing with it and eventually smacking it into a wall when it won't shut up.

Director Ernest Dickerson, formerly Spike Lee's cinematographer, has style to burn, bringing a lot of ambition where it's not really needed. So the movie is slick looking and goes down easy, even if it mostly feels like a missed opportunity.

Grade: C+