Amber Heard is the title character, a somewhat aloof high-schooler ( tease ) who has apparently recently gotten ‘hot’, and is now chased after by all the boys. She’s invited on a weekend trip by some classmates to a remote ranch house, and reluctantly accepts. Naturally all the boys hit on her, but soon they will find more important matters to attend to, like not getting sliced and diced by a mysterious killer who is picking them all off one by one. Anson Mount plays the 30-ish ranch hand who seems a tad ‘off’ (apparently he’s slightly mentally-scarred) and conveniently pops up here and there.
Unless it’s to point out how hot the ubiquitous Amber Heard is (Answer: Very!), I really couldn’t see any point in this slow, aimless Jonathan Levine horror flick that is surprisingly popular with the online horror crowd. I had no idea what I was to take out of it all, and yet, I knew exactly where it was headed (mostly due to terribly story structure).
I blame the screenwriter, Jacob Forman, mostly, because this film never really seemed to have a point, and never really went anywhere interesting or unique. He also supplies us with some of the more objectionable, boring characters (fond of getting drunk, taking drugs and acting generally a-hole ish) in a genre that has way too many such cretins anyway. I also hold cinematographer Darren Genet accountable for his incompetent camerawork that is meant to capture a sun-drenched look (or at least the 70s grindhouse look, ala “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) but in reality it just a Cinematography 101 screw-up to focus the camera directly at the sun throughout the film. A hundred points off for clearly heading towards a lesbian moment and backing out at the last second. Grrrr. Heard is good, but not enough to be able to save this underdone flick.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Fine work by Amber Heard, a couple of cool death scenes, and hot chicks in their underwear can’t save a dull, transparent and badly filmed horror flick.
