2025’s Most Seductive Horror Movie Nabs Rotten Tomatoes Score Just Shy of Weapons

Horror is having a year, and here comes another one gunning for the podium. Bone Lake is an erotic horror thriller that quietly stormed its early festival bow and now looks set to crash the 2025 party of genre overachievers.

What is Bone Lake?

It centers on a couple taking a romantic getaway, where they cross paths with another pair. Things start flirty, slide into manipulative, and then blow up into betrayals and buried truths. It is very much playing in the erotic thriller sandbox, but with teeth.

Festival splash and the numbers so far

Bone Lake premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 21, 2024, and it has been riding a nice wave since. As of now, it is sitting at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. For context, Weapons holds a 94% Tomatometer, and before it hit theaters it even enjoyed a perfect 100% — one of those weird, early-score quirks that always make publicists smile.

What critics are actually saying

Early reactions peg Bone Lake as a surprise standout that injects fresh energy into a very crowded genre. Reviewers like that it leans into its erotic setup without flinching. The caveat: some think the pacing drags at first — it takes its time tightening the screws before it goes full chaos. A few call it not exactly a brainy puzzle, but still a good time. The phrase that keeps popping up: crowd-pleaser. Which is a very nice place to be if you are director Mercedes Bryce Morgan, now on her third feature after Fixation and Spoonful of Sugar. The consensus vibe is that her growing comfort with the genre shows.

Can it hang with 2025’s horror heavyweights?

Short answer: probably not the biggest one of the year, but it has the ingredients to be one of the most talked about. 2025 has turned into an unexpected golden run for horror — box office wins, strong reviews, or both — with titles like Weapons, Sinners, The Conjuring: Last Rites, and 28 Years Later leading the conversation. Here is how a few of those are performing:

• Weapons — $264.8M worldwide; 94% critics | 85% audience on Rotten Tomatoes
• Sinners — $366.6M worldwide; 97% critics | 96% audience
• The Conjuring: Last Rites — $435.7M worldwide; 59% critics | 78% audience

So yeah, the bar is high. But the early reception for Bone Lake — the confidence, the crowd-pleaser angle, the slow-burn-to-wild-turn structure — puts it in the conversation. If the trailer clicked for you, odds are the movie will too.

Release date and where to watch related stuff

Bone Lake hits theaters on October 3, 2025.

If you want to catch up on one of this year’s benchmarks, Weapons is available to rent or buy on Amazon and Apple TV+ in the US.