With an expected stream of influences ranging from DUEL through to POLTERGEIST, all filtered through an Amicus anthology – style structure, AMUSEMENT is a good looking minor gem giving a cinematic veneer thanks to inventive widescreen cinematography and confident direction. This well done flick presents three decent, creepy, initially unrelated episodes that lack only an immediate payoff, before tying them all together neatly in a 20 minute wrap-up. Ultimately it resolves itself with an unnerving back-story for its malevolent, giggling bad guy – kudos for the icky animal-mutilation childhood flashback that sets up the modern-day horrors we have witnessed.
Eschewing in your face sadistic gore for tension and old-school creepiness, AMUSEMENT largely succeeds in its mission to unsettle. The muting of the on-screen nastiness means that director Simpson can, when he chooses, pull off a gruesome shock – notably a marvelous bit of eye gouging – and also pull the rug out from under the gore hound’s nose : the most outré moment of SAW-ish unpleasantness turns out to be a ruse created by the playfully mean spirited killer.
The movie opens with a derivative, suspenseful slice of on-the-road terrorization in the vein of JEEPERS CREEPERS, JOYRIDE, et al – involving a creepy truck driver, a weird gas station attendant and some nice frissons of fear involving bodies stashed in trucks.
The best section of this portmanteau, however, is the second one, which succeeds in capturing a lot of the pared-down, woman-in-peril intensity of the doll segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR or the prologue of the original WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. Katheryn Winnick, a burgeoning scream queen who was really good in the underrated SATAN’S LITTLE HELPER, is superb as a young woman menaced by a psychopath in a full-size clown costume while sitting her aunt’s two little boys. This sequence amounts to standard stalker shtick but the build-up is terrific. There’s one familiar but totally shiver-inducing revelatory bit in which Winnick tells her aunt on the phone that she’s wigged out by the full-size clown doll in one of the bedrooms…only to be informed that there is NO full size doll in the house. This moment, and several genuinely eerie shots of the “doll” subtly moving, provide the movie with its biggest chills.
The third story is a nervy bit of business involving a young couple who end up exploring and being victimized at a strange, remote facility conducting experiments on abducted young people. One central, jittery mad scientist character wins the Tod Slaughter Horror Ham Award of 2009. Our guess is that David Warner was otherwise engaged.
AMUSEMENT doesn’t’t stun with originality but delivers solid performances, a couple of cool surprises, decent production values and a quietly resonant final scene. It’s superior in a lot of respects to many recent U.S. theatrical horrors and would have been a worthy theatrical prospect had it been given a chance on the big screen.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
