What could've been a very crafty and very intelligent piece of horror turns into a very formulaic and very familiar piece of the slasher film genre we see far too much of. Albino Farm's premise is interesting, but the execution is very poor, and we can see the movie struggle to maintain its short eighty-five minutes by delaying action until around forty minutes in.
Albino Farm takes forever to get going, and when it does, you only wish it had more to offer. The film focuses on four teenagers (Sursok Lagano, Richey, and Bala) who venture out to document the Ozark Mountains for a school project. When the duo get a flat, they head out to a gas station with a strange, unsettling owner who warns them to turn back. One of the dumbest, cockiest, lame-brained teenagers in recent memory convince the gang to travel up to see what the hype is about.
They stumble across the town of Shiloh, which looks like a ghost-town. They learn that many of the town folk fear a legend called "Albino Farm." The teens split up with two going in search of the farm, and two going in search of a church. After doing the genius thing of getting picked up by a hick and two identical twins, they are taken out and abandoned at the Albino Farm. Let the horror movie clichés, jokes, antics, and chase scenes begin.
I believe this film is based off of the legend of a group of College students adventuring around the Ozark Mountains and never returning home. Either this is the legend itself, or a followup to it. Whatever it is, it is poorly executed.
Low budget horror films can't be critiqued by their budget. What you have it what you have, and I believe I shouldn't penalize the producers, directors, etc for working with what they had. I can respect that. But so much is done poorly. In order to believe the characters, you have to throw logic out the window. What makes you want to venture out to the deep part of the Ozarks in the first place? Curiosity kills the cat, and when you stumble upon creepy woods, it's likely to kill you as well.
The sound editing is messy. One point there is dead silence, the next moment the bass almost blows your speakers followed up by very dim talking. Your remote may need to be in your hands at all times for this. Not to mention, the pitch dark lighting may call for a brightness tune up. What a temperamental film. You need to pretty much modify everything on your TV to be satisfied while watching Albino Farm.
This also seems to be influenced by every redneck-slasher film on the market today. Throw three great horror films like The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Wrong Turn in a blender and it'll spit out this mediocre horror flick. Creativity is here, but the execution is like a dog on a leash fighting to inch itself closer to its desired destination while the owner is tugging back. Imagine the producers as the owner, the movie itself as the dog, and the destination being "typical redneck film schlock." There's a metaphor that will sum this up.
The makeup effects is where this film starts to redeem itself in quality. The effects on the creatures are realistic, but then the film wants to add some digital effects on some of the people. You can pretty much do that on any free editing system, and do it a lot better. Not being a Mac user, I still am sure this can be done one way or another on the Photo-booth program that comes free with the computer. They can do that, but they can't add some sort of effect to brighten up the scenery.
I can tell the crew were serious about making this film like the legend or something close to it. They didn't fall on their neck as much as they fell on their face in their attempts with this. Albino Farm, still, could've been great b-movie horror. What we have here, is just lazy editing and a lazy script ripping off so much of every other movie in its genre. It's a copy of a copy.
Starring: Chris Jericho, Richard Christy, Tammin Sursok, Duane Whitaker, Alicia Lagano, Nick Richey, and Sunkrish Bala. Directed by: Joe Anderson and Sean McEwen.
