Bone Keeper

The opening of Bone Keeper set 400,000 years ago and an incident in 1976, are fairly good indicators of where the film goes, eventually.

Before that there is the setup where Olivia (Sandra Alexandra Marks) has teamed with scientists and caving experts to try and find her mother. She disappeared looking for her father, whom we see taken at the cave in 1976.

The group is the usual collection of smugness and science, plus an influencer they pickup Ashley (Sarah T Cohen) also known as the Bitchhiker. It’s a mutual arrangement something unusual for Ashley and some online support for Olivia.

Arriving at the caves they decide to go for a drink. Needless to say they are not very welcome at the local pub, though manage to get some information on Professor Harrison (John Rhys-Davies). The professor is an expert on the caves and what is in them. As unfriendly as he is he provides some useful information (and speculation as to the origins) as well as warning against entering the cave system.

The team begin their expedition into the cave system and very soon find that they are not alone. There’s then a sequence of nasty killings as the group split up and begin to be picked off.

Bone Keeper is very much a film of two halves with the first half as set up by director and writer Howard J. Ford not moving too far from the stereotypes these films tend to have. That includes a couple of beardy smug perma-grins that are odds on to become monster mash.

However once the team split up, the film becomes another beast with the claustrophobia and sense of dread layered on. There’s also further revelations as to the nature of the monsters. And this isn’t lost as the remnants of the team find their way out of the caves.

Being an alien-monster movie the effects are a major feature. By and large they are ok with a mixture of CGI and practical effects creating some grotesque and haunting images. Lobbed into this while playing some fairly stock characters, the cast do a good job.

However the film is poorly supported by an almost continuous score that is at times highly intrusive, to the pointe of becoming a distraction.

That being said The Bone Keeper is solid entertainment and sits well within Ford’s ever-increasing output.

Bone Keeper had its World Premiere at Glasgow FrightFest on 6 March 2026. A UK Digital Release will follow on 6 April 2026.