Okay, maybe they didn’t come at me. I went looking for them, because I was due for a slasher fix. Let’s see if Abandoned Souls, The Man in the Maze, and KILD TV did the trick.
ABANDONED SOULS (2010)
This film begins in a grisly, gritty prison run by guards wearing hazmat masks with sores on their faces…not that is ever explained or has any impact on the rest of the film despite this scene being pretty substantial in length.
We then meet a couple who takes a group of people the boyfriend doesn’t like to the main girl’s hometown to stay in a cottage for the weekend. Fun.
There’s an urban legend about a nearby island on which a hermit lived in an old shack, and if you went and knocked on the door, he would knock back.
So…these grown ass adults jump in a boat and locate the shack. They knock on the door, someone knocks back, they run back to their boat, and it has floated off. Seems like a great start of a horror flick, but it also feels like this whole damn thing might be a setup.
Within minutes they’re fighting, one guy gets called a faggot, and one guy hits another guy in the head with a rock. What the fuck? Why do these people hang out together?
We learn through flashbacks that there’s a search for an escaped prisoner known as the feral man. Does he have whatever the prison guards had at beginning? We don’t know. The plot is almost good (and reminded me of Hide & Go Shriek a little), but there are way too many convenient coincidences as a catch is thrown in at the end that causes nothing to make sense. At all. Like the deformed prison guards…
THE MAN IN THE MAZE (2011)
The odd structure of this indie film really messes with the pacing. The only thing that kept me watching for quite a while is that the leading man is so damn sexy with a tight bod!
Need a hand…or a tongue?
We are thrust immediately into a serious situation—a group of victims in the woods is at the mercy of a killer with a bandaged head.
They overpower him then spend a huge chunk of the film just walking and talking as they try to escape the maze-like woods.
One guy is all freaked out that Doogie Howser is a homo, they talk about an old shamanic legend, and finally there’s a good jump scare when the hottie goes to take a piss.
There’s also some intrigue. The hottie discovers there’s a double of him roaming around the woods! I’d take two of him over-easy any day.
It all has something to do with an old tale of Native Americans having their land stolen by evil white men.
This truly is an odd film.
KILD TV (2016)
It’s yet another odd film that’s sort of good for a while but falls flat by the end.
There’s plenty of setup—a group of people works at a television station. At night they do an over-the-top horror host show. So when one of them turns up dead in the media room and the small night crew discovers they can’t get out of the building, they try to plea to their audience to call the police.
Meanwhile, they all agree to stick together…then immediately separate. Many of the kills happen off screen and we just see the aftermath, we never see a killer, and there’s one standout kill that is brutal and gory. There’s also a gratuitous tit scene…which also features a gratuitous guy in a Speedo!
There’s a whodunit angle with them all assuming someone in their group is the killer, but the denouement and killer reveal are the weakest part.
