Score: 1 / 5
Okay, class, today we'll be learning about MacGuffins. Who here can explain the exact nature of the MacGuffin? No one?
Good, you all get an A for the day! A MacGuffin, a plot device usually taking the form of an object, often has no precise explanation or concrete details. It may not be totally mysterious, but even if it is explained, the MacGuffin's essence is usually unimportant to the story anyway. What is important, though, is its effect on the other characters and therefore the events of the story. Hence, it's a plot device. It may also be a symbol, but be wary: Symbols, though perhaps not crucial to the plot, are often crucial to themes and character development.
Still a bit confused? Let's try a few examples. The One Ring could be considered a MacGuffin, as its mysterious nature isn't something we can understand, though its very existence is enough to cause the Fellowship to seek its destruction halfway around the world. The Holy Grail, similarly, or the Ark of the Covenant often ignite searches and quests that possess treasure-hunters for monetary or religious reasons. If you're watching an adventure movie or action thriller, chances are a MacGuffin either incited the action or becomes the plot's vehicle. Consider just about every spy movie: A MacGuffin will appear as a "list" or "file" of secret agents, shady conspirators, or potential targets, and it will motivate characters to fight and kill to repossess it, though the names themselves may never be revealed to us and if they were it wouldn't much matter to the plot.
Valley of Bones is an abject failure -- albeit a really fascinating one -- precisely because almost everything in it is a MacGuffin. Is that such a problem? Not at first glance, as the film's various elements seem almost immediately poised to launch us into breakneck action. The opening scene of a Spanish-speaking man who may or may not be law enforcement pulling a prisoner out of his trunk, preparing to kill him, and being subsequently murdered by the man struck me as intriguing, though I could have told you nothing about the characters or why they were in the middle of nowhere fighting to the death. Soon we learn they are in the Badlands, the bleak and dusty north of US cowboy country where apparently Mexican drug cartels (I know, I know, somebody stop Trump from seeing this movie) hold violent sway. The prisoner, McCoy (played by co-writer Steven Molony), having dispatched his would-be killer, buries his foe and takes his truck, but not before finding a huge T-Rex tooth in the dirt and a bag of heroin in the glove compartment.
Enter our protagonists (McCoy is arguably the protagonist, but he's also villainous, so just shut it), mother and paleontologist Anna (Autumn Reeser) and her second-grader son Ezekiel (Mason Mahay). "Eze" (pronounced "easy") or "Zeke", as he is called by his doting uncle Nate (Rhys Coiro) is having emotional trouble with his mother, whose frequent and lengthy digs keep her away. She isn't even aware of the general things he likes, as she tells her concerned father one night. Her deceased husband, Nate's brother, holds a mysterious control over Ezekiel, and apparently can only be replaced by Anna. When Anna and her family start digging in McCoy's location to find the rest of the massive Rex skeleton, McCoy plots to use the find to pay off his debts to "El Papa" to save himself, his daughter, and their dog.
Sound like an interesting premise?
Just beyond the halfway mark, we begin to realize there is little worth our attention. The tension dissolves as quickly as it builds, or, should I say, slowly, because it takes about an hour to put everything into motion. The skeleton (a MacGuffin if ever I saw one!) is never revealed to us, though apparently the dig unearths the whole damn thing. It has motivated both the archaeologists and the criminals and ends up -- wait for it -- in Dubai. The Rex tooth similarly serves only to point to the skeleton, and does little else narratively; that is, until the end, when Ezekiel casually stabs McCoy with it. (Did I mention spoiler alert? Oh well.)
The heroin (at least, I assume it's heroin, though that too is left undetermined) is also a MacGuffin, as it motivates McCoy for no reason other than a reminder of his debt to the cartel. Actually, this one hung me up for a bit, because instead of hocking the drug for money or, you know, a decent tent, McCoy uses the shit to get high and violent. We might argue that this illogical turn reveals his overwhelming stress, or even that it serves a later plot point that McCoy is a recovering addict, told to us by the lone shining star of the film, Alexandra Billings (Transparent), as his friend and supporter. But that rings hollow when the drug's presence serves almost no purpose; McCoy would be just as desperate and violent without the drug simply due to his love of his daughter and dog and his efforts to save them from El Papa. The drug, ultimately, is the actor's excuse to be awesome and terrifying in the violent climax, where he screams delivers a bone-chilling gutteral lullaby while hunting for Anna and Ezekiel in the starlit wasteland.
Just when I thought all the MacGuffins were over, writer-director Dan Glaser throws more into the pot, right at the end where they simply do not belong. During a brief shootout when a cartel hitman discovers McCoy at the dig, Anna tosses her keys into a rocky fissure; okay, she "drops" them, but who drops things horizontally that land a good five or more feet away in the one place you can't reach? I digress. The keys are to the truck, now loaded with boxes of bones ready to be taken (somewhere?). The keys serve to bring all the characters back to the dig site under cover of darkness, seeking the keys for their escape. The truck, too, is a MacGuffin, and the bones it carries, when McCoy finally takes the keys and, for some reason, Ezekiel (because why wouldn't you want to add kidnapping and child endangerment to you numerous crimes?) with him to his cartel rendezvous. Shall we continue? There's a rattlesnake in the crevice, which aggressively chases Ezekiel and bites both him and his mother (is this how snakes really work? I think not), which is totally unnecessary because their lives are already in danger and they both survive anyway, so it's just a needless little bit of nothing to spice up the screen.
MacGuffins abound in the Badlands, apparently, and despite the lovely score and cinematography, they drag the film down in the dust. "Some things are better left buried," the film's tagline reads, a cruel sort of self-parodying indictment of the film's inane existence. I didn't think it would be possible for a movie about dinosaur bones and family dysfunction and drug cartels could be so awful, but these filmmakers unearthed a real doozy. I'm going to go make dinner now, which is not a MacGuffin because it has essence and interest and because it serves the narrative purpose of getting me off this topic.
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