Well, the most hotly anticipated/debated slasher movie of the year is finally here, and whilst I thought it was very good, it wasn’t as amazing as the trailer would have you believe.
The set up is nothing new, as a group of friends get lost on their way to a football game and decide to camp out. After a creepy encounter with a mysterious stranger in a truck, the kids awake the next day to find that one of their cars has been messed with and so the group splits, with two of them heading for help in a nearby town which has it’s very own House of Wax. Creepiness ensues as the film builds to it’s gory, novel and messy conclusion.
I was really excited about this as I love slasher movies, but I also know that Dark Castle never deliver the goods, so I was praying that they would finally get it right with this one, and to an extent they did. The film has a very gritty look and feel that gives it an indie sensibility, which in turn makes the 70’s vibe even stronger.
There is a strong feeling of dread present and a lurking fear throughout the film’s initial set up, and it ends up being very violent and extremely wince inducing in many parts.
I really liked the cast here and applaud Dark Castle for taking the standard ‘let’s just use cast members from some of our shows to fill the roles’ route and turning it on it’s head by making Chad Michael Murray a sarcastic prick, and Jared Padalecki a different kind of nice guy. The characters relationships work really well, as they all seem to care for each other and i’ll say it again….Paris did a good job here, as she did in her previous horror effort Nine Lives (which I also predicted would be released here in the UK due to the hype surrounding HOW and what do you know….it’s out June 6th).
The film really does take time to establish itself and it’s characters before offing it’s cast in unpredictable and very gory fashion. Teenage girls screamed, adult audience members grimaced and a few commoners shouted things along the lines of ‘That shit is f*cked up!!
What didn’t work so well for me was John Ottman’s score, which fails to make it’s presence known and lessens the impact of Paris’ much anticipated chase sequence. The jump scenes were so slowly paced that you didn’t really jump, and I also think they underused the wax aspect which is ultimately more terrifying than just being slaughtered.
I’m quite perplexed by the comments across the net about Elisha Cuthbert being able to do certain things with an injury, or not doing things that she probably should have, as everything is explained. The film has many subtleties that are admittedly edited quickly, but if you pay attention you’ll see that the filmmakers have thought things through.
OVERALL SUMMARY
This is definitely Dark Castle’s best film to date and is well worth seeing. I think that the majority of horror journalists enjoyed it more than they will admit, as they may have a problem with confessing that they were wrong, not to mention hasty to predict it would suck. I also think that the apparent box office failure (although it’s not doing too badly) is down to the fact that it’s rated R Stateside and it’s got a real mean streak in it. Horror fans need to stop complaining and get their bums in seats to ensure that we begin to see more movies like this taking chances and actually delivering something slightly disturbing instead of chopping it out and then slapping it back in for the DVD.
