Yet another entry into the subgenre of halfwitted horny teenagers getting stuck in the wilds and falling foul of the local mad cannibal. How many more times are we supposed to sit through the Wrong Turn/Texas Chain Saw Massacre idea before we get wise to it? There's nothing particularly new or innovative here but it does have a few surprises and it's not afraid to be agreeably nasty and bloody in places. Is that really enough, though?
It's 1984 and an instantly tiresome octet of pretty but doomed idiots hijack the school bus on the night of the big dance in order to paaaaarty at a summer cabin They're the usual motley group of easily distinguishable types: the Bad Boy, the Jolly Fat Guy, the Sensitive Guy, the Slutty One, the Goth One, the Shy Virgin. But wouldn't you know, the bus breaks down and they end up in a spooky abandoned house in the middle of the night - except it's not abandoned; there are skulls in an upstairs shrine and a cellar full of human parts dangling from the ceiling, and They Are Not Alone...
Lost After Dark does have a few tricks up its sleeve - one kill in particular did surprise me - and it has a nice visual sheen to it as someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like a grindhouse 80s teen bloodbath complete with scratches, fading at the edges and dust marks on the "print". It even includes burning celluloid and Reel Missing caption at a crucial moment, just as Planet Terror did (presumably to save themselves the trouble and expense of a particularly gruesome death scene). I also like the grain effect and wish more films would employ it rather than settle for cold dead digital. Robert Patrick is the familiar face of authority as the almost comedic school principal, and it ends with the obligatory He's Not Dead stinger, more in hope than expectation of Lost After Dark 2. It's fun enough as a disposable slasher of disposable teens; agreeable but absolutely not essential.
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