Bones
dir. Dickerson
Now Playing
Various Theaters

Bones, the new horror flick from Ernest Dickerson, capitalizes on Snoop Dogg's cool-as-ice gangster image--but oops, forgets to include a cohesive plot. The premise: badass Snoop is a rich pimpdaddy, who is asked to finance scams of the local riffraff. When Snoop says "hell, no," to most of their requests, the dumbasses get all grumpy. One evening, they go over to Snoop's crib to convince him to help start a crack ring, but Snoop doesn't want his neighborhood peeps all looped up on dope. Fuming about this lack of financial backing, the dudes force Snoop to smoke crack--despite his absolute intolerance for drug use--then shoot him and bury him in the basement.

Now, it just so happens that one of the co-conspirators has two sons and a daughter who years later, secretly acquire Snoop Dogg's old haunted house and turn it into a dance club. Naturally, Snoop's unrestful spirit doesn't like that one bit, and decides to bring down a reign of terror on the kids, who have essentially done nothing wrong--besides mixing Cypress Hill and Al Green on the turntables. He sics his hell-hound on one of them, drenches the club in maggots on opening night, and then gets reborn and goes around killing all the guys that crossed him, plus a bunch of others.

Now, there are two essential problems with this film. One, the plot doesn't make much sense because Snoop's wrath isn't justified--he kills innocent kids, goddamnit! What kind of message is that sending? Two, it's not very scary. Weird, tar-covered people reach out of the walls, there's lots of maggots everywhere, Snoop's dead body grows muscle and skin while coming back to life--but you're never surprised by their actions, just confused. And it doesn't help that all the characters are really dumb. I mean, come on--they keep going back after the walls bleed, the ceiling tells them to get out, and the basement fills with flies? Maybe the screenwriter should've rented the The Amityville Horror. I wish I had.