Boneyard - The Dark Case: A Mediocre B-Movie Inspired by a Heinous Crime

Albuquerque, New Mexico. Law enforcement discovers the lifeless bodies of eleven women, buried in a desert area of West Mesa. The victims, who disappeared between 2001 and 2005, all appear to be linked to the world of prostitution and drug trafficking. To profile the serial killer responsible for the massacre, special FBI agent Petrovick is contacted, a veteran with unorthodox methods and a troubled past.

In Boneyard - The Dark Case, Petrovick must collaborate with Detective Ortega and Police Chief Carter in a "multi-agency" investigation where egos clash and investigative methods diverge. As the team tries to identify the person responsible for what the press now calls "the Bone Collector murders", a web of intrigue casts suspicions and suspects in every direction. The case is further complicated when the unsettling possibility emerges that the killer might be one of the police department's own members, turning everyone into potential enemies and undermining the mutual trust needed to solve the case.

Boneyard: From Tragedy to Screen

The film draws inspiration from a real, unsolved tragedy, with real victims who have names and surnames, to weave a low-grade b-movie around it, showing no sensitivity in handling such delicate material. The final dedication "to the victims of the West Mesa murders" sounds hypocritical and offensive after ninety-six minutes of dime-store cinema, which exploits the dramatic premise to construct a rather improbable and convoluted narrative.

The screenplay, co-written by director Asif Akbar himself, is a narrative mess that doesn't know where it's going. It shifts from the lone serial killer theory to that of the corrupt cop, to the hypothesis of sex trafficking, without ever exploring any of these leads convincingly and organically. The fact that the plot moves on two main lines, with investigations by Detective Ortega and those by the FBI agent each proceeding independently, fails to give coherence to a story that progressively gets lost in a series of inconsistencies, stifling any minimal tension or introspective depth in the portrayal of one-dimensional figures.

An attempt is made to give them greater depth through some flashbacks, especially concerning the character of Mel Gibson who, though uninspired, stands out for his charisma in an otherwise anonymous cast, where the other main roles are entrusted to 50 Cent and the little-known Brian Van Holt.

Nothing to Save

On a technical level, Boneyard - The Dark Case possesses all the characteristics of a low-budget production desperately trying to mask its limitations without success. Joshua Reis's cinematography opts for a desaturated color look, in the unexpressed hope of conveying barrenness and decay, but it is the staging as a whole that suffers from a bad Nineties television style.

One constantly perceives that they are watching something made with few resources and even less inspiration. The setting of Albuquerque itself seems completely artificial: despite actually being filmed in New Mexico, the film fails to capture the atmosphere and identity of the place in the slightest. No character of Mexican or Hispanic origin in a police department that in reality is largely composed of people of that ethnicity, so much so that even Detective Ortega - a surname of clear origins - is absurdly played by a Caucasian actor. Just another blunder in a film poorly conceived and even more poorly executed.