There’s a dispiriting lack of imagination on display in the latest batch of low-budget horror movies released under the auspices of “After Dark Horrorfest.” The genre holds so much potential—and has such a strong tradition of filmmakers doing memorable work on the cheap—and yet a large chunk of the fourth ADH wave consists of unambitious reworkings of Saw and routine slasher fare. Is this really the best the midnight-madness circuit offered over the past year?
The Final is the worst of the bunch: a witless, shockless kill-spree in which a generic circle of high-school outcasts traps and dispatches a generic circle of high-school bitches and bullies. The script’s lone intriguing theme is the notion that when certain elements are combined—no matter the intention—the results are always “caustic.” But for the most part, The Final isn’t so subtle; it’s a talky bore, peppered with unimaginative murders. Kill Theory’s novice screenwriter Kelly Palmer and director Chris Moore (the latter best known for his involvement with Project Greenlight) work with a cleverer conceit in their film, involving a group of hard-partying college kids trapped at a lake house by an unseen psychopath who demands they slaughter each other to escape. Kill Theory’s cast is strong, but their characters are uniformly douchey, and the villain’s plan gets less plausible as the plot plays out. The movie isn’t terrible, but it’s nothing special, either.
The best of the semi-Saw-esque ADH4 movies springs partially from the mind of legendary horror author Clive Barker. First-time writer-director Anthony DiBlasi adapts a Barker short story into Dread, about a sociopathic art-school charmer who enlists his classmates to participate in a Kinsey-style project about fear, then exploits what he learns about their deepest anxieties to construct deadly art installations. Part Peeping Tom and part monologue-driven theater piece, Dread is overwritten and more than a little pretentious, but it’s well-performed, and DiBlasi shows a gift for shooting at length in tiny rooms—by making judicious use of frames within frames—as well as an ability to trot out some striking imagery and kinetic camera moves once he gets outside his little boxes. He’s a filmmaker to watch.
The “gathering of potential victims” premise gets yet another workout in the dreary The Reeds, which follows a band of British chums who charter a party boat in a podunk town and putter through a local marsh, where they’re menaced by pale teens who may or may not be real. The Reeds has a creepy throwback synth score, but when all is said and done, it’s yet another who-will-die-next movie in which the characters are so obnoxious and/or indistinct that the only way to respond is “Who cares?” (Plus it has a twist ending that’s less of an “Oh, cool!” than a “Wait, what?”) The Reeds’ hick-o-phobia also dominates The Graves, a grimy, unpleasant thriller written and directed by comic-book veteran Brian Pulido. Clare Grant and Jillian Murray play road-tripping sisters who steer their heaving cleavage and too-cool-for-school attitudes toward an Arizona tourist trap, looking for something to mock. But the joke’s on them: The natives are all part of a bloodthirsty religious cult. The Graves is shot on cruddy-looking video, features terrible CGI gore effects, and is unoriginal, unfunny, and un-scary. And while Grant and Murray make fine heroines, Pulido doesn’t give them anything to do that hasn’t been done too many times before.