What are we doing here???

Here we go, with a trio of films that take on a plot that has become popular in horror films in recent years; a group of people is trapped somewhere together without knowing why they’ve been put in the situation.

ENTER NOWHERE (2011)

Enter Nowhere isn’t actually a horror film. It’s more a fantastical/science-fiction story. Scott Eastwood and two chicks all end up at a cabin in the woods, each of them claiming they left their car broken down somewhere and came looking for help. It’s so cold out they decide to take shelter in the cabin overnight.

The usual happens. They don’t trust each other at first, they get restless, they start to explore, they keep ending up back at the same cabin no matter what direction they go, etc. The movie only really gets interesting when they figure out what it is they have in common, and I can’t talk about any of that without giving it away. Let’s just say it’s sort of time travel in nature and leads to an emotional/dramatic twist, not a frightening one. After that, they have to work together to try to change their fates.

LET US PREY (2014)

 
Personally, if I have to watch a movie about a rookie female cop stuck in a supernatural police station, it’s going to be Last Shift (blog here). But if you like religious horror in which people are forced to pay for their sins, well, here you go.

Pollyanna McIntosh (The Woman, Offspring, Tales of Halloween) is the rookie cop, and things get weird in her precinct when a car accident victim walks in, bringing a Storm of the Century  vibe. There’s loads of dialogue as the guy—who calls himself “Six”—verbally mind fucks everyone, makes them face their sins, and talks about the Bible a lot. To trick horror fans into watching, a whole lot of gore, violence, and murder is thrown in (just like in the Bible), with everyone eventually turning on themselves and each other to ensure their ticket to hell.

The highlight is that we learn the police sergeant is gay and he brutally killed another man in a fit of gay jealousy. All ye saintly and faithful viewers rejoice, because this sodomite also becomes the main evil presence, stripping off his shirt and wrapping himself in barbed wire (I think it sexy, so I am most definitely going to hell…but we already knew that), and then hunting everyone else down with a gun.

Six even checks him off the list of sinners while dropping the “pervert” word, then kisses the final girl to remind us that heterosexuality will always win in the end.

KILL THEORY (2009)

A guy is released from a mental institution. Meanwhile, a bunch of kids heads to a vacation house. Okay….

The cast of pretty people includes Mean Girls gay boy Daniel Franzese (I Spit on Your Grave, Killer Pad), Teddy Dunn (Veronica Mars), Agnes Bruckner (The Pact, Vacancy 2: The First Cut, The Woods, Venom), Patrick John Flueger (Mother’s Day remake), Theo Rossi (Cloverfield, House of the Dead 2) and Taryn Manning (#Horror, The Breed, Zombie Apocalypse).

There’s some friendship and relationship drama, everyone goes off to have sex, and then a dead body is thrown through a window. Wahoo! Let the games begin. And speaking of playing a game, the kids find video in which the crazy guy, talking all Jigsaw like, instructs them to make sure that all but one of them is dead before the night is through. The last one standing gets to leave.

You know the drill: distrust, loyalties switching, manipulation, backstabbing (literally). The gore is good as the kids get violent on each other, and Daniel Franzese’s performance eventually steals the show. My favorite part is when he thinks he’s being grabbed through a window by the nutcase, but it’s just one of his friends, who points out the obvious stupidity: “You’re sitting by an open window.”

After all the necessary people are dead, this cliché but entertaining film quickly slaps on a tag explaining why the crazy guy from the beginning targeted these kids.