A young metal head, with the help of the God of Carrion, makes an electric guitar of bones, all to cheer up his big brother after he is kicked out of his death metal band.

Written and directed by Nicole Elmer. We are currently in post-production.

Video below is from the successful Indiegogo campaign.

Bone Guitar is a horror-fantasy short film SET in Austin, Texas.

When I was a kid, I hated metal. My older brother would drive me to school and blast either Slayer Reign in Blood or Metallica Master of Puppets. I plugged my ears and suffered my way to school.

Now decades later as I write this, things could not be more different for me.

About four years ago, my music tastes started to change. A lot. I was always into industrial metal since a teen (think Ministry Psalm 69 and NIN Broken and Fixed) but that was about it. Enter the nutso years of the Trump administration, then COVID-19, then Winter Storm Uri, the Jan 6th insurrection, etc. and by the time Russia invaded the Ukraine, one of the few outlets I had to deal with my emotions was metal. (“Metal” is a big word to use for this genre. So, let me be more specific. For me: death, doom, sludge, thrash, post and drone metal are my sub genres of choice. And even this gets too specific as there is so much innovative “interbreeding” constantly breathing fresh life into the genre.)

Decades later, metal is where I go to feel alive, to get creative inspiration, to be awed by the musicianship, enchanted (and repulsed) by the oral histories, and find an outlet for the shit that life can dump on us. I love discovering new and old bands alike. It’s also a place where I can challenge rigid “cancel culture” censorship practices (on the left and the right) as well as gender assumptions. Yes, women CAN like and PERFORM metal.

Bone Guitar is a combination of my love of horror films, urban fantasy, and metal. It’s weird, sure, but it’s also accessible through the devotion two brothers have for each other. Two outsiders that need each other as much as they need their music. It’s a film I’ve been searching for a long time, and something I can’t be more exited about.

By the way, say what you want about Metallica, but on Spotify, Enter Sandman is nearing 1 billion plays. If that doesn’t say something about the way metal speaks to people,…well, then nothing will.

- Nicole Elmer, writer and director

THE LOOK

This look video says it all, but in short: the film is in black & white, and my inspiration for the look is Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963). Some stills from that film are in in the slide show above. These gorgeously lit and composed shots support my desire to show metal as what it usually is: a remarkable feat of showmanship and musical mastery. The choices Fellini and his team made here also give insight into the internal lives of the characters, an important goal of mine with the complex and intense characters that make up Bone Guitar.

THEME

Beyond its bizarre tone and pure embrace of absurdist horror, Bone Guitar explores values we place on things we kill for different purposes: food, clothing, revenge, and even weird electric guitars from another dimension!

Music in these videos is by Slayer, Bolt Thrower, and Cannibal Corpse.