213 BONES (2025)

Advance Review! Premiering at London’s Frightfest 2025 from Overcast!
Directed by Jeffrey Primm.
Written by Dominic Arcelin, Jeffrey Primm.
Check out the trailer here!!

A group of forensic anthropology students are given an assignment to assemble and find the method of murder for a set of fake bones set out for them by their teacher Mr. Kelley (Colin Egglesfield). But as these budding investigators try to crack their case, a masked serial killer is killing members of their class and inserting real bones into their investigation.

213 BONES is a perfectly decent little whodunnit in the vein of SCREAM minus the recognizable actors playing the part of the 10 little Indians. The film is a nicely structured mystery, enticing you to guess who the killer is and questioning everyone until the end. For the most part, this film does a decent job of keeping its killer under wraps until the mask comes off.

The main problem with 213 BONES is that besides the refreshing inclusion of SUMMER SCHOOL’s Dean Cameron—that’s right, Chainsaw from Chainsaw and Dave, who so much deserved their own movie. Besides Cameron, the rest of the cast of Breakfast Clubbers are rather bland and unremarkable. Sure, they all give convincing performances, but the real reason these whodunnits work so well, like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, URBAN LEGEND, and even the more upper crust KNIVES OUT series, is because they have recognizable characters playing most of the roles. Take away these notable faces, and the deaths become interchangeable and downright bland. Sure no-namers dying over and again work in slasher films like FRIDAY THE 13TH, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and HALLOWEEN, but those films have the killer as the touchstone. When the masked killer is just someone in a mask and the victims are all little developed cliches, it is hard to give a fig, and unfortunately, that’s what happened here. It becomes a race to the end and a challenge to guess the killer and less of a story worth investing in because you have previous investment to the faces getting kakked or the killer who’s been around for five installments. Sadly, that’s the case for 213 BONES.

On a side note, seeing Dean Cameron in the recent and excellent FOUND FOOTAGE: THE MAKING OF THE PATTERSON PROJECT film and then this one, simply makes me want to start the charge for a modern day Chainsaw and Dave film, where a pair of old horror fans decide to reunite and take a trip to see the site where the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was filmed and maybe run into a family of lunatics and utilize their horror know-how to get them out of the predicament. Cameron shows he still has his quirky chops and while it looks like Gary Riley has given up acting, it would be great to get the original actor who played Dave for the role. Oh well, I guy can dream, I guess.

Though I’m not sure why this film is set in the early nineties, I did enjoy the attention to cultural detail for the era. The girls have big and really bad hairstyles. The outfits are ripped right from the era. There is even a decent amount of late eighties/early nineties songs on the soundtrack from Soundgarden, Bananarama, Duran Duran, and others. I imagine the filmmakers simply put the songs in without having the rights, since this is a festival film, so when it is released, those songs might not make the final cut, but it did add to the authenticity of the time.

The reveal is ok. The final revelation as to who it is simply bored down to who is left and while I feel the identity of the killer was somewhat of a letdown, it does end up being an exciting ending, nevertheless. 213 BONES is a capable little whodunnit, though it lacks the spice to make it as a big-league slasher mystery.