Jessica Lucas hear's her master's voice.
(Picturehouse) Keir O’Donnell, Katheryn Winnick, Laura Breckinridge, Jessica Lucas, Tad Hilgenbrinck, Reid Scott, Rena Owen, Kevin Gage. Directed by John Simpson
When a movie, which has been marketed for a theatrical release complete with release date and trailer, goes direct to video, there’s usually a reason. Sometimes it’s because the distributor goes belly-up, but mostly it’s because the movie is really bad. This is particularly true in the horror genre.
Shelby (Breckinridge) is returning home to Cincinnati with her boyfriend Rob (Hilgenbrinck) who has an inexplicable love of driving in convoys. After she bitches to him about driving too fast, they wind up filling up at a gas station with a guy who has been convoy-ing with them for several miles (O’Donnell) and a friendly trucker. The trucker tells them he heard on his CB that the Interstate was a parking lot and that the smokies were out in force laying bear traps, ten-four.
So of course they wind up driving down this deserted road in the middle of nowhere because those kinds of roads are always the alternative to Interstates and Shelby is nervous because she’s sure she saw a terrified woman in the cab of the truck. Rob is skeptical right up to the point where the terrified woman becomes a projectile that goes straight into his windshield. The other convoy guy and Rob try to find out what’s up with the trucker except of course the trucker kidnaps both the girls and Rob and the convoy guy have to rescue them…except we find out that the convoy guy is the real maniac. Jokes on you, Rob.
Tabitha (Winnick) is babysitting the unholy terrors that are her cousins at the spiffy new digs of her aunt. Everything is mostly okay except that her aunt has a thing for clowns and there are dozens of clown dolls everywhere, including a life-sized creepy clown that sits in a rocking chair and stares at Tabitha, particularly when she gets naked (why is it that none of my babysitters ever got naked?) or takes a nap. When her aunt calls to check up on the kids, it turns out that Auntie Clownlover has no life-sized clowns in the house. It turns out that Soylent Green….is peeeeeeeeeopullllllll or at least life-sized clown dolls are people. Either way you slice it, it’s bad for Tabitha, particularly since the guy in the clown suit is the same guy who went all convoy on Shelby and Rob.
Finally, there’s Lisa (Lucas) whose roommate has disappeared with a guy who apparently is staying in a hotel on the edge of town. Worrywart Lisa sends her boyfriend Dan (Scott) in to investigate and he winds up having a close encounter with a Victorola that has a very nasty speaker system. In the meantime, Lisa waits two hours and rather than call the police, decides to go into the spooky hotel where nobody has emerged from since she started watching it and find out for herself what’s going on. It’s brain-dead thinking like that which keeps the horror film industry alive.
Of course, by now you know that the guy in the hotel is the same guy who kidnapped Shelby and Tabitha…that’s right, kidnapped not murdered…and now they are trapped in his insane revenge game that goes back to some terrible event that happened in the fourth grade, which should teach you kids to be nice to everyone because you never know if they’ll grow up to be a homicidal maniac.
The problem here is that the script is just plain awful. Each of the three stories in this kinda sorta anthology has the exact same twist and by the third time around you’re finding much more interesting things by staring into the pattern on your Pepperoni Pizza than you are onscreen, which is quite a shame. Director Simpson actually has crafted a very good-looking movie with a competent cast that had they been given a better story to work with might have actually come up with a pretty darn good little horror movie. Unfortunately, there wasn’t, they didn’t and you shouldn’t.
WHY RENT THIS: Very nice production values and the three leads are nice to look at.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The script is a mess; the three stories all have the same twist and quite frankly by the third time around there’s not a lot to hold our interest.
FAMILY VALUES: Not a lot of gore per se, but there is a good deal of violence and bad language. Like most horror movies, mature teens and older only.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was initially slated for wide release but when New Line shut down their Picturehouse division, it was left on the shelf for almost two years before being released on video.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.
FINAL RATING: 5/10
TOMORROW: Sugar
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