Down the Road (2012)
3/10
Imitation is not flattery when done like this...its awful
8 April 2013
Warning: Spoilers
I swear that I will not watch anymore low budget horror but I always get sucked in. The thing that sucked me in on this one was that it proclaimed to be an homage to the slasher flicks of 70's and 80's. An homage? Hardly. It is cookie cutter amateur shlock that tries to literally copy Friday the 13th. Rumour has it that Victor Miller (screenwriter of Friday the 13th) gave his blessing and advice on this script and if that is true, Miller must have been drugged or drunk when he read it. The script is atrocious. Most of the time I wondered if there was even a script at all and if the characters didn't just try to make their own "cool" "slang" dialogue because it was so incredibly bad. The characters sounded awkward filling in every other word with the "F" word like they were struggling to make sense of the script. The back story on the killer is so insanely stupid and to top it all off near the end of the film he gets a sappy soliloquy that makes no sense and breaks the entire feel of the movie. Now, I will say this that the latter half of the film...when the killer is stalking and eliminating the victims (thank goodness) actually was better than the first half. And I will also say that the special effects for an incredibly low budget, very poor movie were actually very well done. The killing scenes were far better than the movie itself and one particularly disturbing scene of a nail being hammered into someones skull was impressive. At this point I will do what another reviewer did and call out Lauren Palmer who did the special effects for shamelessly reviewing her own movie and her own work and giving it a 10/10 on IMDb. Seriously...very very poor taste. And that's unfortunate Ms. Palmer because your work was the ONLY redeemable part of this crapfest.

The acting was truly atrocious. The main cast was bad but the supporting cast was even worse. And why in the HELL did Clint Howard get involved in this and why even more does he get a listing on the cover of the movie. Clint Howard doesn't sell movies and if that's your star power...you REALLY are in trouble. The man has a 30 second role, and two lines and is completely pointless. I also have to give a dishonourable mention to Diane Bakos and Luis Pacheco who play "Jenn's parents." I sincerely think they must be friends of the cast or parents of one of the cast because both of them were excruciatingly awful on screen. Jen Dance, who gets the most back story and is supposed to be our "scream queen" is so wooden and broody and while she shows the most emotion, it isn't good. Shaun Paul Costello is so awful...I can't even explain. He is the number one perpetrator of spewing pointless obscenities and dialogue that is torture to listen to. Nikki Bell plays the slutty girl who sleeps with her guy and then gets killed. She can't even do that right because she is awful and beyond cookie cutter. It was like they said to her...okay you're the slutty girl, now go. They even make reference to her as being exactly that and then feel they need to explain her purpose. No one else is worth mentioning because they are that bad. But the rest of the cast is spared from being truly awful because they barely have a pulse on screen. Brian Gallagher might be the only one who actually seems to have any talent at all but the script is so bad that it gives him nothing to work with and his serial killer is so mundane and pointless.

Big shocker here...Jason Christopher in his first feature film writes and directs the movie. He clearly enjoys horror movies and thought he could do it just as well by copying Friday the 13th. He is a terrible writer, and a barely mediocre director. I say mediocre because some of the kill scenes and chase scenes were actually decently done but only barely. This was literally like watching little kids "play" Friday the 13th in their front lawns. I don't understand it because I know for a fact that there are really good amateur writers out there and they should be given the right to create their stuff because it has to be better than this crap. Low budget imitation crap with good special effects as weird as that sounds. This one is a total miss. 3/10
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