What can you say, interesting enough premise (supposedly inspired by actual events) let down by flatfooted and tame execution. Despite it's unpleasant details and dreary context --- a backwoods tow-truck driver is a serial killer who kidnaps unlucky girls at the end of every month holding them in a water tank in his wrecking yard where he constantly eats with them and then rapes them
so this a constant pattern and when it comes to the end of the following month. He kills them, chops them up and virtually eats them
sharing the leftovers with his dog (which is the size of a horse
not really but one character believes so). So its time to look for another calendar pin-up for next month. But the girl he kidnapped on Halloween has drawn the attention of an FBI agent. So the race begins to find her, before she becomes his next meal. This cheap, shot-on-video production felt like a clunky second-rate "Silence of the Lambs" crossed "Captivity" outing. It tries too hard to be ominous and cruel, but felt daftly comedic in its attempts. Kind of dearth of suspense and thrills
lingering with lousy jump jolts and stupid plot contrivances. Some things that occur just have you questioning how this killer could go this long without being caught and some of the investigation skills by the FBI agent (namely the line-dancing interruption) are laughable. Performances are on the lank side, although genre favourite Brad Dourif gets a bit of screen time as a town sheriff who "eventually" figures out what's going on. Innis Casey plays the deranged serial killer, as the camera likes to really focus on Casey's glassy expressions. Galadriel Stineman gives the usual victim performance and Vivica A. Fox as the headstrong FBI agent with (you guess) a scarred past ("Can you still pull the trigger?"). These are underwritten characters, which only show minor glimpses of their complexities and conflicted sides. Too bad because it did seem meander about, on repetitive and tired actions/scenarios and especially when there was one fascinatingly dark, if minor sequence involving a dinner scene involving the killer and his dead parents. Diverting, but an exaggeratedly slipshod serial killer thriller.
"This fairytale is not going to have a happy ending."
