A Steamy 2025 Horror Movie With A Wild Premise Is A Hidden Gem On Netflix

The sea of "content" available on Netflix is a foreboding place through which to wade, but if all you want is a bit of raunch with a side of horror, the erotic thriller "Bone Lake" has you covered. The film is a fun and steamy excursion into horror that received solid reviews upon its initial release and is now available to watch on the king of the streamers.

Netflix has given us everything from critically-acclaimed dramas such as "Adolescence" to interminable sludge such as Kevin Hart's "Lift." The service has exposed global audiences to international cinema they otherwise might never have seen, while simultaneously seeming to devalue the concept of a movie altogether, with an endless flood of middling streaming flicks that seem to be doing impressions of actual movies. Now and then, it also gives us something unapologetically steamy to indulge in, such as the Netflix trilogy that IMDb users consider one of the worst of all time.

"Bone Lake" doesn't really fall into any of the categories, but there's no denying the sheer levels of lewdness on display here. The film was directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan, whose first feature film, the ultra-stylish yet uneven "Fixation," arrived in 2022. In 2024, she directed the not-so-sweet domestic horror story "Spoonful of Sugar," which premiered on Shudder in 2024. "Bone Lake" came next, premiering at Fantastic Fest 2024 ahead of its wide release in October 2025. It's her best effort yet.

In 2022, "Barbarian" gave us a genuinely shocking (and fun) descent into horror that started with two people booking the same rental house. That perfectly solid setup for a horror film quickly transmogrified into one of the most impressively bonkers movies of the last few years, launching the directorial career of Zach Cregger in the process. "Bone Lake" starts with an almost identical premise, wherein two couples are surprised to learn that they've both booked the same lakehouse for a weekend. Rather than shocking us with genre mashups and one of the most ungodly horror monsters of recent memory, however, "Bone Lake" goes on to shock us with pure raunch, gore, and horniness.

The film stars Maddie Hasson as Sage and Marco Pigossi as Diego, a couple who rent a large lake house for a weekend getaway. Once there, the pair are surprised to find that Alex Roe's Will and Andra Nechita's Cin also booked the same home, but the two couples ultimately agree to share the house for the weekend. Things all go well, and everyone goes home happy. Just kidding, things get weird very quickly. First, a series of locked rooms in the house reveal sex toys, sex swings, and a Ouija board. Then, Will and Cin try to seduce Sage and Diego, but their manipulations become more sinister as the weekend goes on, culminating in a desperate, bloody final act that's as gory as it is horny. 

Mercedes Bryce Morgan's movies have gotten better each time, with "Bone Lake" being the best of the bunch. It currently sports an impressive 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, where critics have, for the most part, understood the director's intentions with her steamy 2025 horror effort.

If you thought "Bone Lake" was a pretty apt name for an erotic horror, then you're probably operating on the right wavelength to enjoy this movie. In response to a question about a particular close-up shot from the opening sequence during a Reddit AMA, Morgan said, "I wanted to give people a taste off the bat to let them know they were getting into something that shouldn't be take seriously, was ok to laugh at and f*** yes we were going to pay off with the horror and gore in the end."

Catherine Bray of The Guardian certainly picked up on the unseriousness of the film, writing in her review, "It always feels as if the people making this movie are having fun, and while that's never a guarantee that the audience will too, it's certainly the case here." The Detroit News' Adam Graham felt similarly, writing that "Bone Lake" has "a good sense of humor about itself" and commending the filmmakers for knowing "how to play gore spots for laughs" that resulted in a "good time horror romp with more on its mind than just gross-outs."

Netflixers certainly seem to be enjoying this good time horror romp as "Bone Lake" has been in the streamer's top 10 for the past week, according to FlixPatrol. So, if you're tempted by a fully horny horror outing packed with scenes depicting naked bodies running from crossbows in the woods, then one of the best horror films of 2025 has you covered.