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Bone Tomahawk
"Bone Tomahawk" (2015) follows a small posse tracking a group of cave-dwelling cannibalistic savages who have kidnapped several townspeople, blending classic western rescue-mission structure with graphic horror elements in a genre hybrid uncommon even within the broader neo-western category. Its slow, deliberately paced first two acts, focused on traditional western genre conventions of frontier justice and posse formation, gave the film's eventual, notoriously graphic horror violence in its final act a jarring tonal impact that became the film's most widely discussed feature among genre film audiences. Kurt Russell's performance as the small town's sheriff anchored the film's more traditional western elements, giving "Bone Tomahawk" a genuine dual identity as both a serious, well-crafted western and an effective horror film simultaneously. Its combination of its genuinely novel western-horror genre fusion and its effective traditional western craftsmanship has made "Bone Tomahawk" one of the most distinctive and cult-followed neo-western films of the 2010s.
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The Rider
"The Rider" (2017), directed by Chloé Zhao, follows a young Lakota rodeo rider and horse trainer forced to reckon with his identity after a near-fatal head injury ends his competitive riding career, filmed on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation using non-professional actors playing versions of themselves. Its docufiction approach, casting real rodeo rider Brady Jandreau as a fictionalized version of his own actual life story following his real career-ending injury, gave the film an unusually direct, lived-in authenticity relative to more conventionally scripted and cast neo-western dramas. The film's quiet, contemplative visual style, capturing the Great Plains landscape and horse-training sequences with a naturalistic intimacy, established the same directorial sensibility Zhao would later bring to her Academy Award-winning "Nomadland" a few years afterward. Its combination of its genuinely lived-in docufiction authenticity and Zhao's naturalistic directorial style has made "The Rider" one of the most critically acclaimed and quietly powerful neo-western films of the 2010s.
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