Ah, farming. Rising before the crack of a summer dawn so as not to
waste a precious moment of daylight. Toiling all day in the burning heat,
earning manly calloused hands and sun-scorched skin, the badges of honor
earned by a life of honest hard work.
It's an albino's dream!
Oh, don't worry. For better or worse, there's no farm here nor farming.
Not even that many albinos.
Here's what there is: a group of smart-ass city-slicker college kids
head for adventure out in the Ozarks, where they encounter inbred mutant
rednecks.
How do writers come up with ideas that fresh, that original? I guess we
ordinary mortals can't understand how true geniuses get their flashes of
creative brilliance. 'Tis a mystery.
I started out being unexpectedly impressed with this film. The opening
credits sequence is a good "hook." Two little kids ride their bikes
through the eerily deserted streets of a small rural town. The amber tint
of the scene gives everything a warm glow, as if we were about to watch
one of those chick-flicks about finding love in the Tuscan countryside.
Then something seems wrong. The amber filter gives the sky an unearthly
color, and the earthly warmth seems to transmute into surreal, alien
menace. The two boys stop by a rusted-out old gate which obviously marks
forbidden territory. The older of the two boys is all manly bravado. He
squeezes through the gate and rudely taunts his companion for being afraid
to follow. "You're a pussy. I'm not afraid of anything."
If you watch a lot of horror movies, you will know that whenever anyone
says, "I'm not afraid," it is a foreshadowing of their doom, which often
arrives immediately, as it does here. Both boys appear to be devoured and
or dismembered by horrible forces which move so quickly that we barely
glimpse them and do not fully understand what they might be or precisely
what they have done to the boys.
(Perhaps the albino farmers are upset by the kids having delayed their
harvest?)
Then the film actually begins. We have been lured in by a teaser which
told us enough to get us curious and involved, but not too much to spoil
the mystery.
If the rest of the film had been as good as that opening sequence, it
could have been quite a nifty little genre masterpiece. Unfortunately, the
rest of the film is just a typical bit of "college kids vs mutant
hayseeds" torture porn. The film's forward movement touches every single
familiar point in the roadmap of that sub-genre, and does so with some
sub-standard performances.
Move along, lads, nothing to see here.
