6 Out Of 10
Let me get some things out of the way about this movie before I channel Dennis Miller and go off on a rant. I thought first time writer/director Nicholas Smith did a fine job, with good storytelling and well directed scenes. The film also boast above par acting for a low budget horror movie. Starring Randall Batinkoff and Bruce Davison who have over 70 years of talent between them and it came across on screen. The four leads played by Trevor Morgan, Brooke Peoples, Hallock Beals, and Lauren Storm all put in tight and believable performance's. Now the only really glaring plot hole was the age of the killer, the sheriff (Davison)was giving the background of the case to his deputy(Batinkoff) and the numbers would have put the killers age at about 70 give or take a few years. But that can be forgiving. The story borrows from the greats in the genre including The Blair Witch and Halloween to name a couple, and actually pulls it off.
****May Contain Spoilers****
The movie tells two separate intertwined stories till the final act when they merge. One being the hunt for an escaped serial killer and the other a supernatural tale of group of teens trying to find a urban legend. The thriller storyline is pretty straight forward killer breaks out, kills guards, carjacks a van to get home. with a nice little red herring thrown in to keep us guessing. The horror storyline is much the same cookie cutter supernatural killer fare we get all the time. Teens check out something scary,car breaks, cell phones lose signal, and one by one they go off alone. On a side note it was refreshing to see them not hate each other like you see in so many of these types of movies. What makes this movie special is the way they work the two storylines together. This is truly a case of the whole being greater than it's parts. Either part of the movie would have been mediocre at best but fit nicely together. Thought out the movie we are lead to believe that the serial killer is the one terrorizing the kids at his old killing ground. Not until the end of the movie do we find out that he was killed at 11:14 pm the night before the exact time the teens watches stopped working and the strange things started happen to them a disembodied hand leaving a print on the window. A flash in the camera of someone behind their car. Strange sounds all around them. Easy enough then right find what's keeping him here fix it and send him into the light. The End turn up the lights time to head out. Not so fast............
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here but the movie ends on a To Be Continued screen yep thats right nothing settled don't know who lived or died don't know why he came back. Nothing zip, zilch, not even a sorry. Now that premiss wouldn't be bad if and it's a big if. If Munger Road II was in the can....wait for it.....it's not and the latest news is it ain't coming. So instead of wrapping up the loose ends and if people like it then writing the sequel We'll just force a sequel and I can take it easy on the screenplay. The whole thing is ludicrous hell I sat through all the credits thinking it was a out of place joke. The movie was 86 minutes long even an extra 14 minutes you could have cleaned it up and a real good movie(I bet it could have been done in 10). But the audience was short changed and it was a bad move and you should feel bad for doing it. If you can't get it together for part II at least go shoot the end for the first one and call it an extended directors cut. All in all decent movie that you get short changed in the end.
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