A curious combination of arty mind-fuck and blackly comic horror movie, with sexy Laura Breckenridge clad throughout in an array of figure-hugging, often soaked / sweaty / muddy / bloody tight vest-tops. She’s a college student who makes the mistake of driving home drunk after a party. En-route she thinks she hits an animal but, upon returning home, she realizes that she rammed a kindergarten teacher (Timothy Corrigan) and dragged him all the way home. As in Stuart Gordon’s STUCK, which the first half heavily resembles, Corrigan is still alive, and Breckenridge, fearing conviction, strives to dispose of him with limited success.
In addition to the obvious STUCK parallels, the movie this most closely ends up resembling is the memorable “Hitchhiker” episode of CREEPSHOW 2. The material is fairly throwaway, though director Enda McCallion treats it as an excuse for the kind of demented stylistic experimentation Sam Raimi revealed in during the 80’s. Thus we have a lot of flashy, showy touches like wild POV shots (from inside a toilet while the heroine vomits, following a tray of drinks, etc.) and DePalma-influenced use of split screen.
The narrative is slow going in the first half as Breckenridge acts irrationally, exploring the woods and her darkened house at unsociable hours, but finally becomes a more straight-ahead horror show as the heroine is tormented, stalked and tortured by the now zombie-like guy she hit. It’s vaguely film-school pretentious and ventures into surrealism with mixed results, but it’s still not above fake dream scares and cribbing music / visuals from Hitchcock. The pacing is uneven at times and there’s an occasional reliance on slasher movie tropes, though at least it’s visually interesting and Breckenridge does a sterling job as one of the more terrorized of recent (anti) heroines.
The O.T.T. ghoulishness of the main villain amps up the EC-comics-derived poetic justice aspect of the tale, as do the more outré moments of eyeball-impaling gore. Along the way, there are some really nice touches : an extended suspense scenario that has the heroine tied to the bumper of a car with Christmas lights and driven at speed by Corrigan ; a non-bloody but horrific attack on a gas station attendant who ends up literally filled with petrol ; and a weird, creepy sequence recalling Bob Clark’s DEAD OF NIGHT in which Corrigan returns home to his horrified wife and kids.
-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
