Having seen director Andy Palmer’s films Find Me and The Funhouse Massacre, I added a few more of his films into my watchlist. However, the one I really want to see isn’t readily available yet, but if the rumors I’ve heard about it are true, a whole lot of horror fans are going to want to see it. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Meanwhile, here’s a quick look at two more Andy Palmer films I checked out on Prime.
BADLANDS OF KAIN (2016)
Running 110 minutes, Badlands of Kain is beyond a slow burn—it is repetitively ominous without delivering on its promises until the very end and could have been streamlined to 80 minutes.
The opener alone sets us up for more than we get, with a bitchy wife being put in her place, permanently.
Then we meet two young women on a road trip. The car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, they get towed to a small town, and have to stay overnight. The locals are eerily religious, and one of the girls begins seeing violent situations that aren’t really happening.
Virtually every suspense scene as the film crawls forward leads to a dead end, so we have to wait a long time to find out what’s really going on as the girls kill time in the town. The final twist is okay, but we’ve seen it dozens of times before, and this brings nothing new to the mix.
ALIEN STRAIN (2014)
Again, not one of Palmer’s most original ideas, this is a low budget alien abduction film.
A very cute guy is locked in a mental institution telling his story of what he actually thinks happened to his missing girlfriend when they went into the woods together…
Presented in flashbacks, the film tells the very slow and uninspired story of him trying to find his missing woman…with a little help from one of the girls from Badlands of Kain. There are some simple, alien-esque hallucinations along the way, but the leading man’s visual appeal is mostly what kept me interested, because this isn’t exactly Fire In The Sky.
Eventually the girlfriend returns, but she’s…different. The truth finally comes out when they go back into the woods. It’s the best part of the film, but is also basically spoiled by the cover art.
I definitely prefer Find Me and The Funhouse Massacre over these two. Here’s hoping Palmer’s latest film gets a wide release.
