Halloween Movie Madness! Week 3 - Reeker

Okay so I'm cheating just a bit. Since I knew I'd be moving this week I figured I'd watch two movies last week....JUST in case I couldn't get to one this week. I have a feeling I won't be getting to one this week.

But if I do, I'll post again! I know! You're all SO excited!

Contain yourselves.

Anways, I checked out Reeker on Showtime (Showtime has been a WEALTH of horror films lately!).

A quick overview: A group of stereotypical college kids are ride sharing to a Burning Man like get together in the desert. Unfortunately along the way their car breaks down by an abandoned motel. As they work to get the car up they begin to find terrifying things like people who are now only torsoes and a horrific odor following them. The odor belongs to The Reeker who is a creepy bastard with a BO problem and nasty looking weapons. Chaos ensues.

Not much of a synopsis but then its not much of a story. But despite its simplicity it wasn't horrible. Actually its better than I expected and I did like the slight twist ending that it had. Its hardly an award winner but its entertaining at times.

But what it did lack was...well coherency. Maybe I'm just dense (actually it probably IS because I'm dense) but there were a lot of moments that just made me tilt my head and say "...wha?". Random flashback scenes, strange moments of mangled bodies, some sort of subplot with a drug dealer following them are scattered through the film. Though most of this explains itself in the end, it confused me more than made me hunger for what it was all about and I ended up yelling "Explain yourself, movie!" at my TV more than once.

The characters were very two dimensional but not overly annoying...except the stoner guy...hated him. I especially liked our leading lady from South Africa, Gretchen, who turned into quite the bad ass near the end. And while the blond named Cookie (I kid you not) was a bit bland, she had a pretty awesome death scene in an out house. And for those of you who have seen this movie, did the weird contraption in the toilet remind anyone else of the trash compactor monster from Star Wars?

I have a feeling I just wasn't paying enough attention to this movie to really get into it. Oh wow, hows THAT for a review huh? "So I watched a movie and I'm reviewing it but I didn't really pay attention to it". I did watch it, but unfortunately Reeker dragged in enough places that I ended up getting distracted by shiny things on my carpet. There are long moments of things not happening. I'm sure they were trying to build suspense but it dragged. And there's a whole lot of set up in the beginning of the movie that I feel didn't pay off much. I wanted to see some slasher action and I felt it was trying to be something more but not really getting there.

But honestly? That out house death scene and the fight on top of the motor home at the end did make it worth my watch. The gore is pretty fun too. Not a ton of gore but what's there is well done. Also I did like the design of The Reeker too and if this movie had a stronger story I think we could have had a pretty good Horror villain to add to the top cannon.

While I wouldn't say "go out and buy this!" I think its worth watching on cable for some mindless fun. Its not horrible but its not memorable either.

I did hear the sequel, No Man's Land: Rise of the Reeker is a lot better than this one. did anyone see that?