The Ordeal

Director: Fabrice Du Welz (2004)
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Jackie Berroyer, Jean-Luc Couchard
Find it: IMDB

This Christmas, while others were rotting their brain cells with festive shit like Elf and The Grinch and The Muppet Christmas Carol (all of which I actually like) I found me drinking myself into oblivion and watching a French horror film about a cabaret singer who finds himself kidnapped by a mad farmer, dressed like a woman and chased around by the mad farmer's also mad love rivals. It's like Emmerdale meets Something Horrible. And yes, I'm aware that every time I watch a film about mad farmers I compare it to Emmerdale. I fucking love Emmerdale, all right.

Marc Stevens (Lucas) is the cabaret singer in question. Daniel O' Donnell and Cliff Richard should never watch The Ordeal, because this film would thoroughly make them shit their pants. Not that Cliff Richard would ever watch extreme French horror anyway. He's more of a Songs of Praise sort of fellow.

When his van breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Stevens is taken in by kindly-faced inn owner Bartel (Berroyer). Unfortunately, Stevens reminds Bartel of his missing wife, and he's less than eager to release the poor club singer. A quick bang on the noggin later, and Stevens finds himself tied up wearing a dress, while Bartel rants and raves about how his lovely wife is never going to leave him again. Luckily for Mark, it is a very pretty dress. So pretty that Mark proves to be very popular amongst all of the other locals too. 

For all its violence and forced cross-dressing, The Ordeal follows the fairly standard Torture Film template. There's the sense of impending doom, the inevitable capture, the escape, the re-capture, the re-escape - then the bit where Anything Could Happen. Being a collector of 'extreme' cinema and having heard so many good things about The Ordeal, I found myself a little disappointed by the film. It's extreme, but not that extreme - a mite predictable and slow. Still, Stevens is easy to root for, and there's a nice sense of surrealism to some of the scenes. I particularly enjoyed the local pub and Bartel's dim-witted friend, Boris (Couchard). The Ordeal is a little unsettling, but never an Ordeal to watch, as it should be.

That said, it makes for great Christmas viewing. No, really, it does. There's a Christmas tree in it and everything.

Inbred

Director: Alex Chandon (2011)

Starring: Jo Hartley, Seamus O'Neill, Dominic Brunt

Find it: IMDB

If there are two things in life that I love which others regularly fail to appreciate, it's the humble backwoods horror movie, and a little soap opera called Emmerdale. Never before have the twain met, until now. Not only is Inbred a little bit like Emmerdale anyway (in so much as it's set in a small country village) but it stars my favourite cast member of that soap opera too - Dominic Brunt, aka cuddly horse traumatised vet Paddy Kirk. Prior to watching Inbred, I was aware that Paddy from off've Emmerdale had made a horror movie, but had no idea that this was that movie. Imagine my thunderous joy when I saw Paddy from off've Emmerdale pop up, wielding a fucking chainsaw, no less.

The plot at first appears to offer nothing special. In fact, I was dreading watching Inbred, so fed up am I with half-arsed backwoods horror films. As two social workers take a van load of delinquent teenagers into the countryside in the hope of getting them to behave, they are beset by the village's contingent of inbred psychopaths. The story is like a cross between The League of Gentlemen (nothing to do with Alan Moore), Severance and 2001 Maniacs. It quickly becomes evident that Inbred is more than your average Texas Chain Saw Massacre rip-off.

Insanely gory, frequently funny and very violent, Inbred is tasteless, crass and often shocking. There are vegetables being shoved places where vegetables really shouldn't go, horses trampling people to death and a truly tremendous amount of exploding heads. Needless to say, this won't be to all tastes. The characters aren't particularly likeable, and too often the victims' acting descends into bouts of ear-piercing screaming and shrieking. Still, the kids are horrid enough that you can enjoy their Murder By Inbred, and the villains are fantastically realised. Pub landlord Jim (O'Neill) is a wonderfully gruff psychopath, and Paddy Brunt looks truly disturbing as chainsaw wielding Podge. Emmerdale Farm is a pretty terrible place to live anyway (a plane literally landed on it once, and a woman was exploded by lightning in a phone box) - Not for nothing do we refer to Emmerdale as 't'village of t'damned' in our house - so it's entirely appropriate that Inbred should feature one of its stars.   

With Pearl not around to keep an eye on things, standards at the veterinary practice went downhill fast.

Imaginative as it might be in places, there are of course clichés. I've not seen a backwoods horror movie in years that managed to avoid breaking out the bear traps, and Inbred is no different. However, it manages to dance around those clichés somewhat, using them in a manner one might not expect. Several plot points and scenes I recognised from the first time around they were done in Severance, but Inbred is more enjoyable than that Danny Dyer afflicted movie. Its sense of fun overpowers most of its flaws. It even imports its own version of Deliverance's duelling banjos in the form of the genuinely catchy 'eeh by gum'. Eeh by gum, it's good.

If you're easily amused, like myself, you can pretend that Inbred is one of those whimsical Emmerdale spin-off movies - that ask things like 'what if the Dingles won the lottery or went on holiday?' - taken to a terrifying extreme. This unlikely contender might just be my favourite backwoods horror movie of 2012. It's violent, funny and more than a little silly. Not sure I'll ever be able to look at Paddy from off've Emmerdale in the same light again, though.

The Hike

Director: Rupert Bryan (2011)

Starring: Zara Pythian, Lisa Marie Long, Barbara Nedeljakova

Find it: IMDB

A group of friends retire to the woods for the weekend to indulge in a little camping (or glamping, as I believe the technical term is nowadays*) and the terrible delivery of rubbish lines. There is a little hiking in this film called The Hike, but a lot more camping. In an attempt to replicate The Descent, the characters are all female and are intended to be perceived as 'strong'. But where The Descent showed strength through good writing and characterisation, The Hike simply has its characters kick the shit out of Tamer Hassan during the film's opening moments.

And where The Descent was wonderfully acted, The Hike features the biggest display of group incompetence I have ever seen in a film. Even Shauna MacDonald is terrible during the one scene in which she appears. Of the women, they're mostly indistinguishable from one another. The only characterisation is given to Lady Rambo (whose dead army boyfriend backstory is ridiculous) and the glamour model who happens to be dating Tamer Hassan. Tamer Hassan gives the movie's best performance. If that isn't a damning indictment of The Hike, then I don't know what is.

The horrible acting becomes less noticeable during the horror and action sequences. But maybe I was just distracted by all the rape. Where most backwoods horror flicks tend to give their Hillbillies or their monsters a more colourful motive (usually cannibalism), The Hike is just a rape film. Rape is to The Hike what a chainsaw is to Leatherface. The Hike is a film in which four main characters are raped; with three of those rapes happening at the same time. And one of those victims is actually dead at the time. It's incredibly unpleasant and tremendously dull. It's like Deliverance, except there's no underlying point to any of it, it lasts about twenty minutes and the rapists all deliver stupid monologues as they go. Also, Deliverance was good. This is not good.

What does work: there's a nice twist just before the film gets all rapey. Tamer Hassan (in one of his two appearances) calls a man a fuckin' slag. The poster is really funky. The woods look really nice. You'll actually see a male penis at one point (and not in the context of a rape scene). Whilst I'm not a fan of peni, I do like to see them in horror films, as a counterbalance to all the boobs (mind you, this goodwill is spoiled somewhat by the amount of sexual violence directed towards the ladies later on). Oh, and then I watched The Descent afterwards. Anything that makes me watch The Descent again is a good thing.

Awfully acted, intolerably scripted, offensive, dull and stupid, The Hike is a disappointment. Take a hike, The Hike.

*Amongst idiots

Red State

Director: Kevin Smith (2011)

Starring: Michael Parks, Nicholas Braun, John Goodman

Find it: IMDB

Blatant schadenfreude for anyone who's ever looked at the Westbro Bastard clan and thought "I wish they would shut up." Trawling the Internets for sex, three horny American teenagers happen across a Craigslist-like website where a local lady promises to do the lot of them at once. I'm not sure why that would appeal to anyone, but the lads are thrilled. They jump in their car and take off to the woman's trailer forthwith. So far, so Inbetweeners. It's also schadenfreude, then, for anyone who's ever looked at a horny teenager and thought "DIE."

For pretty soon, Red State turns all Hostel; the youths find themselves captured by a deranged preacher (Parks) and his adoring followers. It's a film partly inspired by the infamous Westbro Church and partly by the infamous 1993 Waco siege which saw a cult of Bible lovers violently clash with US law enforcement. The latter influence is particularly well felt in the second half of the film, wherein it becomes less a horror movie and more a standard sort of action/thriller affair. Thankfully the horrible teenagers take a back seat, allowing the Reverend Cooper (who looks distractingly like an evil Richard Branson) and John Goodman's Federal Agent to take center stage. If there's a problem with the acting, it's the film's decision to have Stephen Root wasted on an awkward retread of his Office Space character.

Following the atrocious Cop Out and having read his Batman comics, I was ready to give up on Kevin Smith (that said, I am an unabashed fan of Jersey Girl, which everyone else seems to hate). But Red State is indeed the return to form that many proclaim. Much of that is down to the magnetic Michael Parks as the villain. Half an hour or so into the movie, there's a very lengthy scene in which Reverend Cooper delivers his sermon. Many movies wouldn't have survived such a prolonged lack of action, but the acting, script and direction ensures that it's not at all boring. It's actually the extended gunfights during which Red State flounders. It briefly finds its way again during a surreal showdown - and then loses it yet again in a silly, smug sequence that thinks itself cleverer/funnier than it is.

As critiques of religion go, Red State is smarter and more entertaining than most. It's not at all preachy and lacks the forced look-I've-read-the-Bible feel that so soured Dogma. Despite the difficult subject matter, it's a lot of fun. It's probably the most fun I've ever had with a Kevin Smith movie. And it raises a lot of questions too. Like, where did a bunch of hardline religion nuts come by a ball gag? Someone, it would seem, has been frequenting some very un-Christian shops. You can't just buy that shit in Sainsbury's, y'know. I actually tried: that's why I'm banned from Sainsbury's.

A great film from that Kevin Smith, Red State truly puts the fun and da mentalism into fundamentalism.

Detour

Director: Severin Eskeland (2009)

Starring: Marte Christensen, Sondre Krogtoft Larsen, Jens Hulten

Find it: IMDB

Inspired by a true story. But more inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (particularly the remake and The Beginning). Driving home to Norway, Lina (Christensen) and Martin (Larsen) are stuck in rural Sweden when their car breaks down. A friendly policeman leads them to a house that looks just like the house in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where they are set upon by (Swedish) Hillbillies straight out of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But instead of eating their victims, these Swedish sadists film their torture and demise to sell online.

From the premise to the 'twists' and secretly pregnant heroine, everything in Detour has been done before. Of course the friendly cop is in on it; the friendly cop is always in on it. At least R. Lee Ermey had the good grace to not even bother pretending to be friendly. Detour presents the least professional torture dungeon I've ever seen. Every five minutes victims are escaping all over the place. At some point you gotta take note and realise "this kidnapping lark ain't for me."

The run-up to anything happening is incredibly boring and predictable. It takes a good half hour for the car to even properly break down. When it does get going (the film, not the car), it becomes more enjoyable but hardly riveting. For the life of me, I can't remember what happens at the end. Answers on a postcard, people. Send them to another address though, because I'm not sure that I actually care.

"STFU. They might hear us. It's The Texas Chain Saw guys: they want their plot back."

If nothing else, Detour is proof that not everything with subtitles is groundbreaking or awesome. If you're thinking of watching this movie, I'd advise taking a Detour of your own: via something else.

A Lonely Place to Die

Director: Julian Gilbey (2011)
Starring: Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Eamonn Walker
Find it: IMDB

Melissa George is an expert mountain climber (no, really) climbing in the Scottish highlands when she and her friends find a little girl abandoned underground in the wilderness. Melissa and her friends rescue the poor dear, unwittingly putting themselves in the sights of the girl's kidnappers. What follows is the plot of Backwoods (that's the largely unseen Gary Oldman/Paddy Considine feature, not the Duff version).

A Lonely Place to Die looks absolutely beautiful, even when Melissa George isn't onscreen. I'm a sucker for some lovely Scottish mountains, and the mountains in this film are very lovely. Even when they're smashing people's heads open, they're lovely. But I suppose A Lovely Place to Die doesn't have the same ring to it.

The mountain climbing and rappelling scenes are reminiscent of Cliffhanger (favourite Stallone movie evarr) whilst the tense forest shootouts and chase scenes have a Deliverance heavy feel. There's even something about The Wicker Man to the film's local Scottish village. It's not a very original movie, but that makes it no less pretty to watch. It could have been Melissa George sitting on the side of a mountain for two hours and I still would have enjoyed this. Heck, I could sit and stare just at Melissa George's grazed knee and be perfectly content.

But it also has the delightfully rat-faced Sean Harris as one of the villains, which gives you yet another reason to watch A Lonely Place to Die. He was great in that music video where his shoes come to life, and he's great in this too. We're spared a horrible child performance in that Anna (Holly Boyd) is practically mute. The action scenes are tense and realistic, making the most of the amazing environment.

It may indeed be a Lonely Place To Die, but when loneliness looks so bloody gorgeous, company is overrated.

And Soon the Darkness

Director: Marcos Efron (2010)

Starring: Amber Heard, Odette Yustman, Karl Urban

Find it: IMDB

A whole movie predicated around Amber Heard and Odette Yustman being in their bikinis. And Soon the Darkness is a Turistas remake of a British thriller from the 1970s. Most remakes are pointless, but the 1970s version of this didn't have Amber Heard and Odette Yustman in bikinis. If you're not inclined towards enjoying Heard & Yustman in bikinis then consider your enjoyment lessened. By The Elder Gods, I actively enjoy Heard & Yustman in their bikinis and even I was bored.

During a cycling holiday in Argentina, Stephanie (Heard) and Ellie (Yustman) start bickering about blokes. When Stephanie storms off, Ellie is kidnapped. With the help of Karl Urban, Stephanie sets about tracking her friend down. It has some good actors, but And Soon the Darkness is not a good movie. I would call it predictable, but there are only two or three plot points to predict.

Amber Heard and Karl Urban are usually good, but the movie must have been an off-day for them both. Heard looks completely lost, whilst Urban mumbles a lot. Thankfully he has the sort of face that looks intense all the time, naturally elevating his crappy surroundings. There's nothing for either of them to do until Heard gets herself kidnapped too. I won't insult your intelligence by labelling that a spoiler.

It's exploitative rubbish really, people hoping that you'll come for the half-naked heroines but stay for their crappy horror story. Well, you've already paid by that point. As soon as its heroines get dressed, all colour drains out of the film. Nothing to see here, move on. And Soon the Darkness. Indeed, I turned the TV off.

YellowBrickRoad

Directors: Jesse Holland, Andy Mitton (2010)

Starring: Cassidy Freeman, Michael Laurino, Anessa Ramsey

Find it: IMDB

The most terrifying thing to come out of Oz since Michael Jackson's Scarecrow. YellowBrickRoad is like The Blair Witch Project crossed with The Evil Dead. A gang of aspiring documentary makers investigate the disappearance of a small town's population. In 1940s' New England, the villagers of Friar wandered off into the hills of New Hampshire. They were never seen again. Given the movie's title, I was expecting to find a tribe of man-eating Munchkins, but YellowBrickRoad delivers something entirely creepier. There is a Scarecrow though, briefly.

Not that one.

Led by Teddy (Barnes) the filmmakers follow the villagers' supposed path into the hills. Again, another lie on the title's behalf. The road isn't yellow. It's not even a road. This is like The Hills Run Red all over again. YellowBrickRoad takes a while to warm up. For the first twenty minutes, it's nothing special; all ignorant villagers and smug kids. But then, as our protagonists reach the point of no return, YellowBrickRoad starts to get a little bit special.

From beyond the hills, they start to hear music. 1940s' dance hall style music with seemingly no source or explanation. The further they travel, the more the road starts to mess with their minds. They begin to turn on each other for the silliest reasons. Harsh words are exchanged and limbs are lost. It's a suspenseful movie with a great atmosphere and concept. The later scenes in the movie are genuinely unsettling. As two of the ill advised idiots begin munching on poisonous forest berries, YellowBrickRoad becomes a superior Shrooms. Trippy and terrifying at the same time, it's properly "far out" (that's what you kids say these days, isn't it?)

The ending won't be to everyone's tastes. There's a sense of bathos that one could liken to finding a wizened old cretin behind the curtain at the end of The Wizard Of Oz. I enjoyed it in a David Lynch kind of way, although it does feel a little anticlimactic.

No lions or tigers of bears, but this YellowBrickRoad is still one worth following. Oh my.

Creature

Director: Fred Andrews (2011)

Starring: Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Sid Haig

Find it: IMDB

A movie that The Internets hate even more than they hate Catwoman #1, Creature is garnering some truly awful reviews and a sense of scorn usually only reserved for Uwe Boll and Rob Schneider. Upon hearing that, it shot straight to the top of my must-see list. Having watched the thing, I can't say that it deserves all of the hate it's been receiving of late. Creature is far too much fun to dislike. Beware, this review is quite spoilerish:

Make no mistake though, Creature is a bad film. As I get older, I find myself becoming less and less interested in plot synopses that begin with the sentence "vacationing college students..." which is a big problem if you're a fan of horror. Creature is indeed about vacationing college students, and its opening moments see a car full of them pull up at a backwoods gas station only to have the locals take an immediate dislike to them. Presumably because the kids are overheard calling said locals "backwards" and generally insulting the place. It's film-making like this that makes me always side with the chainsaw-welding yokels. At least they have manners.

In this case, it's less the locals the kids have to worry about and more the movie's titular Creature. Handily the Creature is illustrated on the poster, so you can't say that you weren't warned when you complain about how shitty it looks.

There's a silly urban legend at play, some incest, a woman getting eaten by a white alligator (MOBY DICK, GEDDIT) and Sid Haig doing his very best with material only marginally more tolerable than a Rob Zombie film. And by 'tolerable', I mean utterly hilarious. The Creature's origin story has a man called Grimley go mad and kill a white alligator with his bare hands and then eat it afterwards. Oh sure, as origins go, it doesn't have the charm of Hatchet - but it does have a man killing and eating a white alligator after it murders his sister slash wife.

And the unintentional comedy doesn't finish there. There's a gratuitous lesbian scene that seems to come out of nowhere, followed by a man killing a snake and squirting its blood in the aforementioned occasional lesbian's face. Meanwhile, The Creature (unseen until well past the halfway mark) skulks in the bushes making clicky Predator sounds. When it finally does appear, it looks like the Alien from the end of Alien: Resurrection.

There's an almost constant force of unintentional hilarity. Sid Haig punches a woman in the face. After failing to get jiggy with her too-drunk friend, the Sometimes Sappho finds a man in the bushes and randomly starts jerking him off. But we shouldn't begrudge this bisexual babe her pleasures of the flesh; after all, she has rather a raw deal from Creature. Kidnapped by Haig and his Hillbillies, she suffers Texas Chain Saw Massacre bondage (complete with burlap gag) and winds up with her feet cut off.

Given Creature's incompetence, misogyny and thorough cheapness, it's beyond me how it managed to stagger past the Sy-Fy channel and into cinemas. The acting is good, I suppose, even if Sid Haig does look like he should be wearing clown makeup. Mehcad Brooks does a sterling job as the film's hero. His earnestness in the face of Creature's stupid rubber monster is truly admirable. It looks a lot like an episode of True Blood, so maybe they were trying to coast on that film's glory.

"Guys," one of the characters exclaims, as she wanders out of her tent wearing not much, "this isn't funny." I beg to differ.

Dagon

Director: Stuart Gordon (2001)

Starring: Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, Raquel Merono

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

No, I haven't spelled 'dragon' wrong. A sizeable portion of Lovecraft here, with vinegar and extra tentacles. Stuart Gordon's Dagon is supposedly based on the HP Lovecraft short story of the same name, despite having (some of) the (vague) plot of The Shadow Over Innsmouth instead. Gordon has picked the best bits of the two stories and made them his own. Dagon is the best Lovecraft adaptation I've seen since Gordon's own Re-Animator. And Dagon manages to be good despite the fact it has mermaids in it.

The Little Mermaid this is not, unless they cut all the singing out of this version. Paul (Godden) and Barbara (Morono) are holidaying on their friends' yacht when they encounter a rather ghastly storm. The boat crashes on the rocks and one of their friends becomes trapped under a bed or something. Paul and Barbara take a life raft to shore and look for help in a little Spanish village. The villagers though, aren't quite right. They have gills, for one thing. And webbed fingers, for another. Barbara is promptly kidnapped by the villagers and Paul goes on the run, with only a local tramp (Rabal) for company. What he encounters is a lot of tentacles, a mermaid and some really smelly hotel bedrooms. Seriously, what Paul finds could surely give The Hotel Inspector a run for her money.

The story is silly and the effects are a bit pants, but Dagon is a great movie for Lovecraft enthusiasts, Stuart Gordon fans and casual horror fans alike. It's no Re-Animator, but Gordon is on fine form here. I particularly enjoyed the messy ending and some of the slimier fish monster designs. There's something distinctly fishy about this HP Lovecraft adaptation, but I like it, all the same.

My Big Fat Gypsy Horror Movie

Director: Kris McManus (2011)

Starring: Shane Sweeney, Tom Geoffrey, Alex Edwards

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

A family of innocent Irish Travellers are minding their own business when a gang of four holidaying city boys happen across their home, trash the place and daub racist graffiti all over the walls. Understandably miffed, the travellers give chase. Racism ensues.

Travellers is the most offensive movie I have ever seen. See, I myself grew up as a Traveller (taken by the movie to mean a family of Irish unfavourables who live in caravans, do bareknuckle boxing and are generally a bit dodgy). Until I was sixteen and we moved into a real house (without wheels or anything) I had dreadlocks and had never set foot inside a school. I grew up on campsites with 'pikeys', 'gyppos', 'didacoys' and what have you. I suppose this is how folks from Down South (USA, I mean, not Bournemouth) must feel about constantly being portrayed as arse-raping cannibal Hillbillies. I seem to recall comedian Rich Hall making a BBC4 documentary to that effect.

The movie's 'heroes' trash the Travellers' caravan, insult its inhabitants and cast numerous aspersions on their lifestyle (I believe not a little inbreeding is insinuated). Which, by the way, seems to consist of deleted scenes from Snatch, My Big Fat Gypsy Bollocks and Danny Dyer's Hardest Men. And the only one of the lads shown 'tough' enough to fight back is revealed to be half-traveller himself. Believe it or not, but growing up in a caravan does not automatically make you hard. I got beat up by a girl once. And not even a gypsy girl.

Eventually Travellers calms down with the racism and the action amps up a fair bit - there's some neat bareknuckle boxing scenes in the last half - becoming almost watchable in the process. There's an effort to make both parties more relateable. But it's hard to give a shit about any of the urban cunts, whilst the Travellers are too thinly drawn to care about either. Attempts to show the traveller lifestyle in a favourable light smell of condescension (then the sole sympathetic traveller girl admits to thinking her life kinda sucks). And even the few vaguely good bits of the movie are ruined by it originating from its main characters' unfathomable dipshittery. At one point they even decide it a good idea to throw away their only weapon. Say what you like about Travellers, but I've never had them paint badly-spelled insults over my house. If anything, my house looks better since I had the travellers visit. How many of you can say you had a city boy tarmac your drive?

Oh well, I suppose it's completely fine to insult Travellers, After all, not many of them own a TV and will therefore be unable to watch Travellers. Lucky them. This movie deserves little more than a big fat gypsy fuck you.

Blood River

Director: Adam Mason (2009)

Starring: Andrew Howard, Tess Panzer, Ian Duncan

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

A bit like The Hitcher, but with a religious twist and nobody really hitches anywhere. There's also very little blood and no river. Eh, it's probably all metaphorical anyway. I think we've established by now that this blog understands neither metaphors or religion. But we'll struggle on. And I enjoyed Blood River very much, despite its use of metaphor and religion. Blood River is one of those movies that might very well take place in purgatory but refuses to spell it out for you. Way to discriminate against us stupid athiests, movie.

Clark (Duncan) and Summer (Panzer) are a seemingly sweet married couple, travelling through desert America to visit Summer's dad. The car breaks down and the pair are stuck in the middle of nowhere. They walk to a nearby deserted town where they encounter the mysterious Joseph (Howard) who wears a stetson, drinks whiskey, calls people "pilgrim" and talks about god a lot. You're never more than six feet away from a god-botherer, especially in America. When not being smug and talking about god, Joseph offers to help Clark and Duncan reach civilization. Only no. It becomes patently obvious that Joseph is more than a simple hitch-hiker. Metaphysical torture guff ensues.

The lead couple is somewhat annoying - particularly the embodiment of all things chode, Clark - but the bad guy duties are handled very well by Andrew Howard. He comes across as something between Michael Rooker and Rutger Hauer, swaggering his way through the movie, managing to be both sinister and sympathetic at the same time. It takes itself a little too seriously at times - and there's an air of predictability - but Blood River is ultimately an intelligent, gripping horror Western with a fine supernatural twist.

The Final Girl Film Club: Cold Prey

This review is in association with the quite wonderful Final Girl Film Club

Director: Roar Uthag (2006)

Starring: Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Viktoria Winge

Find it: IMDB, Amazon, Final Girl

Essentially the same sort of thing you've seen countless times by now, only with snow instead of trees and pretty Norwegians instead of pretty Americans. Snow is better than trees though, and the Norwegians are actually slightly prettier than the Americans we're used to, so it's better on that front, I guess.

Everywhere else, it's business as usual. Five friends take a snowboarding vacation in the snowy wildernesses of Jotunheimen. I would swear that Jotunheimen is where the Ice Giants live in Thor, except it's probably a little bit racist, so I won't. The most likeable of the menfolk falls and breaks his leg after only a few minutes of being out in the snow. Seems that being an idiot isn't just a thing they do in American slasher movies. This is but the first of several dipshit moves made by our friends. They carry injured Morten Tobias (not only is he the most likeable, but he has the best name) to a seemingly abandoned lodge and settle down for the night. Which translates to breaking windows and treating the place like they own it.

Bum move, kids. The lodge is not so abandoned after all, and run by a hulking great nutter with a pickaxe. The very prettiest of the group gets it first, but not before expending the opportunity to wander around in some very tight undercrackers, flashing a very pert bottom to any serial killer in the near vicinity. From that first death onwards, it's a fight for survival, leaving the strong but scowly Jannicke (Berdal) to fend off the killer.

'Careful', as my old nan used to say, 'if the wind changes, your face'll stick like that.' Big problem if you're in Yodenheim Jotunheimen.

Other than there being a bit of snow outside, Cold Prey rarely departs from the template as set by every backwoods horror since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. There's even room for a bit of violence via bear trap. Which came, funnily enough, just as I was thinking "all this movie is missing is a bear trap". The rest is all pickaxes at dawn and some useless fumbling with a shotgun. Huh. Kurt Russell would've made mincemeat of the lot of them with his beard alone.

The kids are fine but vaguely annoying with their stupidity. Thankfully, the most irritating of the characters die first, whilst Jannicke is a decent if uninteresting Final Girl. She looks a lot like my ex actually (especially with all of the scowling) so I was kinda rooting for the killer; but only up to the point where she realises she's made a massive mistake, her new boyfriend's an arse and she should have stayed with Joel instead of going snowboarding. Yeah, Cold Prey sure showed her.

Cold Prey is predictable, slow, a little bit annoying and stupid. But it's also inoffensive, well-acted and looks beautiful. There's one shot in the final scenes that shows what the movie could have been if it had tried, whilst some of the kill sequences are admirably cruel. The killer looks good, and the movie's environment is enough to justify its existence. Mostly though, it just left me feeling Cold.

Gnaw

Director: Gregory Mandry (2008)

Starring: Hiram Bleetman, Carrie Cohen, Nigel Croft-Adams

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

Just like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, only set in Suffolk, England. Watching Gnaw is an odd experience. It's like watching a movie made up of clips from other movies. And I'm not even hyping y'all. Due to the style of this review, there are massive spoilers within. But don't worry, you've already seen Gnaw, in a manner of speaking.

Gnaw opens with a girl running through the forest barefoot and in her underwear, pursued by an unseen force (Severance). Then she is captured, tied to a bed and menaced - sort of sexually - with a knife (Wrong Turn/The Hills Have Eyes 2). Cut to the opening credits, which is made up of newspaper clippings for missing persons (Wrong Turn).

Then we meet a group of friends and couples, none of whom seem to like each other very much. A small creature is accidentally run over (Leatherface) and then someone actually says "we've taken a wrong turn" (um, Wrong Turn). Eventually they reach their destination - a country lodge (Severance) where someone has baked a pie (Severance) for their delectation. Said pie is made of human (Severance) but the sympathetic Final Girl doesn't eat any, because she's a vegetarian (Severance). Then one of the characters finds a human tooth amongst the gravy (Severance). But continues eating anyway. This bit is not like Severance, because Severance characters stopped eating the pie at that point. The characters in Gnaw are actually stupider than characters in a Danny Dyer movie.

One by one, their numbers are relieved (Wrong Turn). One of the kids is caught in a bear trap (Severance/Backwoods/Dying Breed/The Hills Run Red) and the others are alternately murdered outright with a chainsaw (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) or strapped down to a table and murdered with a chainsaw (TCM: The Beginning). An innocuous old lady character turns out to be in kahoots with the killer (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre/Wrong Turn 2/The Have Eyes 2). Final Girl jumps in a car and thinks she's escaped. But oh noes, the killer is sitting on the back seat (TCM: The Beginning). The end.

Gnaw is, if you've never seen any other movie in your life, possibly the only backwoods horror movie you'll ever need to see. The only thing it's missing is a bit in a service station. Not all of this is the movie's fault; the backwoods horror subgenre has been done, done and redone endlessly. I suppose there's only so many variations on the theme out there. And I'm glad someone is still bothering to try. The pull here is in seeing it all done with British accents and in the middle of Suffolk. Which, admittedly, isn't much of a pull.

But it's done with admirable skill, just as good as any American production. The acting is better than you'd expect from a cast of unknowns, and the kill scenes are fine. I had problems with the horrible characters (there's Jack, who brings his girlfriend and bit-on-the-side on holiday together) and the stupid decisions they make. They're such a band of thickies that they already come tied up - and in one case, blindfolded - for the killers' convenience.

Gnaw isn't a properly bad movie by any means. I've seen far worse. It's simply run of the mill. If you can cope with that - or you haven't seen many backwoods slashers in your time - then ignaw everything I've said here (sorry) and wrap your teeth around a meaty piece of homecooked horror.

High Lane

Director: Abel Ferry (2009)

Starring: Fanny (HA) Valette, Johan Libereau, Raphael Lenglet

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

Does for mountain climbing what The Descent did for caving. Only The Descent was still good after it shifted tone to straight cannibal horror. High Lane has an excellent setup; high on tension and beautiful to look at - and then blows it with a final act made up of unoriginal backwoods slasher dross.

The movie starts off very well, with a group of friends tackling a closed mountain trail for a weekend of rock-climbing and group bonding. Only the route's treacherous and crappy, and there's a psychopathic huntsman living up in them there hills. Oops.

The mountain climbing stuff, High Lane gets right. It's as well-filmed and beautifully done as even Cliffhanger (surely the best mountain action movie of all time) with the group's many falls and tumbles providing much tension and thrills. This part of the movie is what The Hills Have Eyes 2 remake sequel should have been. Everything thereafter? Well, it makes even The Hills Have Eyes 2 look adequate.

It's telling that the gory stuff should kick off with a bear trap. I don't think I've seen a single backwoods horror movie without a bear trap in at least five years. Then there's a pit with spikes in it, which a character falls down. Then someone gets shot with a crossbow bolt. Hmm, all this movie is missing is a dodgy looking cottage which actually turns out to be the bad guy's house. Oh. The villain of the piece isn't particularly scary or intimidating, just an ugly-looking huntsman who collects heads and lives in a shithole. Of course, he ties the kids up and vaguely irritates them for a bit, before a series of scuffles and stabby kerfuffles. Spoiler: someone falls off a cliff. The only mild distraction comes from some interesting decisions made by the characters, the pretty environment, and the fact that the lead actress' name is Fanny (a word that, in English colloquial, is so much better than the Americanism). Heh.

Ultimately, I wish I could hate it more. But it counts this little ditty quite heavily on its soundtrack:

Humains

Director: Jacques-Olivier Molon, Pierre-Olivier Thevenin (2009)

Starring: Lorant Deutsch, Sara Forestier, Dominique Pinon

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

A French backwoods horror with a twist*, Humains is a stunning exercise in fucking up one's own movie. It's a symphony in bathos. The first half is a servicable, if slightly dull backwoods horror type thing. Two families take a road trip through Switzerland (although I've been to Switzerland, and it's a lot prettier than Humains portrays it as being) and wind up in trouble when they drive their car off the side of a cliff. The usual backwoods type nonsense ensues until a big twist at the halfway point. Beware spoilers. Although I'd consider this more of a warning than a spoiler.

Dear Humains, it is hard to take you seriously as a horror movie when your antagonist is, essentially, a horny version of this:

Actually, that is quite scary.

That's right, our intrepid heroes are being hunted by a tribe of fucking cavemen. And not even semi-scary cavemen like The Hills Have Eyes mutants or the family from Offspring. The monsters in Humains are actual cavemen who wear furs, have big skulls and throw spears. In a couple of shots, gone is the movie's credibility, believability or good-ibility. I honestly can't think of a worse way Humains could have played out.

So the group discover that they're being hunted by The Flintstones. The men are knocked out and just... well, left there. The cavemen don't even bother trying to kill the men, because they're of no interest. They kidnap the party's women and keep them in their cave as sex slaves. There are no cavegirls, so the species' only hope of survival is through the medium of rape. It would be offensive, but it's just stupid. The action ramps up considerably for the final half hour or so, but it's impossible to take any of it seriously. By the time you're asked to sympathise with the rapist rubber-heads, you'll either have given up entirely or just let your brain go to sleep. That Humains scores 2/5 Screamy Scream Ladies is thanks entirely to the movie's decent first hour and some funny bursts of dialogue throughout. Otherwise, it's a complete failure. Yabba dabba don't bother.

*The twist being that Humains is actually a thoroughly shitty movie.

Motel Hell

Director: Kevin Connor (1980)

Starring: Rory Calhoun, Paul Linke, Nancy Parsons, Nina Axelrod

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

Totally true fact: I will watch any horror movie in which an aggressor wears a pig's head or carries a chainsaw. This may lead to me watching a lot of crappy movies (ahem, hello Saw franchise) but there can occasionally be gold in them thar hills. Case in point, Motel Hell. It combines my inexplicable fetish for chainsaws and people wearing bits of pig on their heads to make a demented, oddly watchable backwoods horror movie that even manages to rise above being the Texas Chain Saw Massacre rip-off that it so obviously is.

Farmer Vincent (Calhoun) and sister Ida (Parsons) live on a farm next to the eponymous Motel Hell(o), which they also own and run. But Vincent's cheerful disposition and smiley demeanour do not belie his true nature. For in his spare time, he enjoys killing people and harvesting their bodies to create his special 'smoked meats' which he then sells to the motel's guests. As a byproduct of Vincent's murderous, cannibalistic activities, into Motel Hell(o) runs Terry (Axelrod), unaware that Vincent has recently harvested her poor boyfriend for dinner. Terry soon begins to fall for Vincent, making the man's sister strangely jealous. Will Terry discover Vincent's dark secrets? Will she even care?

Motel Hell is a very silly movie, often to its own detriment. It brings to mind a more watchable version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Next Generation. It could do with taking itself a little more seriously at times, but some of the humour does bring a smile to the face. I particularly enjoyed seeing Vincent's victims planted like vegetables, and Rory Calhoun does a great job playing the villain. Could have done without the dense cop character though, and the romantic aspect is balls-out stupid. But Motel Hell makes up for some of its silliness with a fun chainsaw related showdown at the end and just enough gore to paint over the cracks. Plus: a man wearing a pig mask carrying a chainsaw. Nuff said.

Up shit creek

Director: Greg Mclean (2005)
Starring: Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, Nathan Phillips, John Jarratt
Find it online: IMDB, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Torture porn is a phrase, as a rule, you won't see much of down in the Review Hole. Us horror fans get enough bad press without the implication that we're "getting off" on said torture, our hands fiddling about in us grundies as an Eastern European crook sticks a hook up some poor girl's nose. Torture has its place in cinema, but for me, it can't just be there for the sake of it. I'm generally quite uninteresting in watching torture guff unless there's some overriding point, rhyme or reason for it. Either throw in a good storyline (Martyrs), do it well (Takashi Miike) or torture Danny Dyer (Severance). Otherwise, I'm not interested. We'll just have another Grotesque, Hostel or - BeJebus Forgive - Craptivity on our hands. Nice as torture is, it wears its welcome out fast.

Wolf Creek was amongst the first of the modern lot to do torture. But that didn't stop it from feeling like something we'd seen a hundred times before. Mostly because there's next to no storyline there. Liz, Christie and Ben are backpacking through the Australian outback when they become stranded at the eponymous Wolf Creek. Stereotypical Ozzie bushman Mick Taylor finds them and offers the unlucky youths a lift back to his camp. Before you can make a racist joke about Fosters, shrimps or barbies, he's strung the three of them up and makes busy with the torture.

Like an evil Crocodile Dundee, Mick locks poor Ben up in a shed (torturing guys mustn't do it for him), ties up the girls (not very thoroughly in Liz's case) and sends the phrase "head on a stick" tumbling into the modern horror lexicon. It's unremittingly grim stuff. The movie's first hour lets you get to really know and like its protagonists. Then, when Mick Taylor arrives, it spends the remainder of the running time bullying the shit out of them. They even have the the cheek of making the most annoying character (bloody Ben) be their only survivor.

Having Ben survive feels like a move designed to infuriate. And not just because Nathan Phillips is a really irritating actor (see the similar but far superior Dying Breed for Phillipsness at its worst), but rather because he really doesn't deserve to survive. He completely disappears for all of the horror scenes, bypassing his share of the torture and violence. I'm no feminist, but it really does feel like the movie is as uninterested in watching Ben as Mick is in torturing him. That said, I get the feeling. I'm completely uninterested in Wolf Creek. The first hour is pretty dull, whilst everything post-Mick is dull in an entirely different way. It's a very self-consciously provocative move for a very self-consciously provocative movie.

So see gentle readers, here we can see why the term "torture porn" - especially when applied to a movie such as Wolf Creek - is an inaccurate and silly one. After all, pornography titillates, not encourages an early bedtime. Wolf Creek is dull, smug, humourless and cruel in a very artificial sort of way. Well made and directed as it is, it's one of the most overrated horror movies of the past ten years. Like Haute Tension and The Devil's Rejects, it's a movie I've rewatched and tried to 'get' many a time. And repeatedly I've found myself unable to get past the pointlessness of it all, blinded by the grotty cinematics and almost banal violence. Up Wolf Creek without a paddle, if you will JOKE DELETED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMOUR.

Ahem, anyway:

The Descent: Part 2

Director: Jon Harris (2009)

Starring: Shauna MacDonald, Michael J Reynolds, Jessika Williams

Find it online: IMDB, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Following the grisly events of her first Descent, Sarah (MacDonald) gets herself rescued by local Appalachian cops and proceeds to forget everything. Since old friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza) is apparently something of a big deal, it's of utmost importance that a search & rescue is launched. Oh, and for the other girls too - although no-one seems to give a shit about Beth, Holly and the other two. Sheriff Ed Oswald (Reynolds) and Deputy Small (Williams) head into the underground caverns, dragging some cannibal-fodder and Sarah with them.

They find the missing girls. Well, bits of them. And predictably, things soon turn very messy and very violent. Sarah regains her memory just as the naked cannibal people arrive to finish what they started. Can she and her fellow potholers escape? Unlikely, but lets tune in anyway.

An atmosphere of complete pointlesness pervades every moment of The Descent 2. Even as it impresses by not being completely shit, it fails to make a decent case for its own existence. Literally everything it does is a repetition of the first movie's events. Sure it's quite a bit gorier and more violent, but it wasn't the violence that made the first Descent such a brilliant movie. It was Neil Marshall's masterful direction - making it as much about grief and claustrophobia as it was cannibals. It was about the relationships between the six girls. We loved it because they were all friends and we cared about them. Aside from Sarah, we have no reason to care about any of this new lot - and Sarah's arc was over and tied up by the end of The Descent anyway.

The otherwise brilliant Shauna MacDonald is wasted here. She barely speaks two lines in the movie's first quarter, and by the time Badass Sarah returns, she has a useless and annoying Deputy character to drag around with her. It's good to see her kicking cannibal nudist ass again, but much of the action is virtually indistinguishable from that of the first flick.

There are very good moments, but it's just a shame that they're buried in a film so pointless. It's well directed, and the kill scenes are even an improvement over the original's. And the beautiful, haunting score is back too. But it just feels incapable of breaking out from beneath its predecessor's quite considerable shadow. And although it isn't too awful, I'm not too keen on the perfunctory yet ridiculous 'twist' that comes during the closing moments. It suggests a sequel, but given Part 2's lukewarm reception, I doubt that there'll be one forthcoming.

The Descent: Part 2 is as disposable a sequel as one can get. It provides more of the same but fails to bring anything - at all - new to the table. If you enjoyed The Descent, then you may get a kick from the revisitation of old characters and environments, but it's ultimately an empty, hollow and forgettable experience. An unsurprising, intermittently enjoyable shame.

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead

Director: Declan O Brien (2009)

Starring: Tamer Hassan, Tom Federic, Janet Montgomery

Find it online: IMDB, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Who would've thought that 2003's Eliza Dushku/mutie inbreds vehicle Wrong Turn could inspire not one but two sequels? Sure, the first one was fun, tense and nasty, but did it really bring enough to the table to warrant sequelization? The second movie; Dead End - straight to DVD, no less - even turned out to be one of my favourite horror movies of the year, despite its budgetary shortcomings and thanks to lots of Henry Rollins. Could they make the hattrick? Alas, well, no. Familiarity breeds contempt - Wong Turn 3 is the weakest of the series so far.

This time around, there are less muties - it's more of an Alien concept, with the hunted under attack from just the one antagonist - and the prey, meanwhile, are a motley lot of escaped prisoners and their hostages. Like Wrong Turn 2, there's no wrong turn actually taken here. The characters all know (more or less) where they are; and it's not as if they accidentally stumbled into the area. Sure, they weren't counting on the cannibalistic likes of Three-Finger, but it's no wrong turn (stick with it, this is going somewhere).

No, the real Wrong Turn is in changing the emphasis from backwoods horror to cons-on-the-run (SEE I TOLD YOU IT WAS GOING SOMEWHERE, DIDN'T I TELL YOU, I TOLD YOU). There's less noticeable gore, no Henry Rollins and not as much of a fun splatterpunk feel to things. In fact, Wrong Turn 3 is downright boring at times. Boring, and shoddy. It's predecessor was noticeably cheap, but at least that had a sense of fun. With that missing, the movie's flaws become all the more evident.

[Thanks to Patrick at Stabbing Stabbing Stabbing who managed to tolerate my shitty sat-nav jokes and puns on the title for long enough to throw a 'cool post' award our way. He must have the wrong Review Hole, but we'll keep the award anyway]

The first thing that strikes is the terrible acting. It's acting so bad that it distracts from the nudity scene which kicks the film off. For shame. It's the weakest opening to a Wrong Turn so far; a real disappointment when compared to the Kimberly Caldwell murder which set its predecessor off to such a flying start. Perfunctory opening kill checked off, the action skips to a prison, where it emerges that some cons are planning a breakout. "That guy" actor Tamer Hassan plays gang boss Chavez. Get used to his face - he plays a bigger villainous part in this movie than the cannibals. This is fine at first, but his sub-Eastenders hardman schtick soon begins to grate.

Chavez and a bunch more cons are loaded onto a prison bus for delivery to another prison. Under the watchful eye of reluctant warden Nate (Federic), the bus crashes. The cons are freed. Prisoners and warden alike are hunted by Three-Finger and, briefly, his equally face-disabled son. And because why the hell not, things are further complicated when a van full of cash is found in the woods. What follows is too much bickering, massive machismo and the occasional gory kill (the best death scene involves a tow truck, an annoying character and some barbed wire).

Wrong Turn 3 is a serviceable bit of backwoods horror, dragged down by a lack of real action, irritating characters and not enough mutie-related violence. It's a disappointment, and one which will probably kill off the franchise. Should've got a sat-nav, guys.