Devil's Pond

Handsome and muscular Kip Pardue (as Mitchell "Mitch" Whalen) takes sexy blonde bride Tara Reid (as Julianne) to honeymoon in a little love shack on a small Montana island surrounded by water. From the bruised and bloody opening, we know this is going to be a bad trip. After a few days of good sex, Ms. Reid finds out she's very likely trapped on the island. Reid is also nervous and afraid around water. She never learned how to swim. Her cell phone doesn't work, either. He looks great wearing only his jeans, but Mr. Pardue shows psycho possibilities. Making matters worse, Pardue is close to running out of cigarettes...

There isn't much of a story here, so director Joel Viertel deserves credit for sustaining some interest as scenes progress. The co-stars are about all you'll see; they are good looking and beautifully photographed, by Matthew Jensen. Pardue and Mr. Viertel keep the male lead from overreaching, which does make his character and the situation more convincing. Pretty in pink lipstick, Reid looks mildly disgusted when she first sees the honeymoon shack and maintains that emotion; she keeps her shirt on, also. While the repair efforts are appreciated, Pardue's see-through love shack does not look like it would stay dry inside.

****** Devil's Pond (5/16/03) Joel Viertel ~ Kip Pardue, Tara Reid, Meredith Baxter, Dan Gunther

Not bad for the genre, if only because the filmmakers stayed away from the usual cliches. I was thoroughly entertained for ninety minutes without having to stop and think too hard, either about bad plot or bad script and that's all I wanted.

It's more of a lake than a pond, and if you expect quality you'll have a devil of a time trying to convince yourself that its worth the rental price, but for me its just the type of bad movie that's a real guilty pleasure.

Imagine what might happen if a former A&F model playing a redneck psycho stalker manages to get the local hick Britney Spears lookalike, played by an alumnus from "American Pie," to marry him and go on their honeymoon for two weeks to a log cabin on an island out in the middle of a VERY isolated lake somewhere within a few hours drive of the podunk town they live in. It can be reached only after miles of travel over dusty logging roads. And the cell phone doesn't work out there either. You know there's gonna be trouble.

When Britney, still in her wedding dress, climbs into the truck immediately after the ceremony and tells her new cutie to "get us the f*ck outta here," you also know you're in for some wonderfully bad dialog, hammy overacting, bad direction and writing, and lots of lowbrow by the numbers fun. And this flick does not let you down. After a few days when Britney runs out of birth control pills, and A&F starts to get weird about wanting to make babies, she might want to end the marriage as quickly as the real Britney did hers, but boy does she have her work cut out for her to do it.

This movie is something a community college drama student from say, northern Minnesota, who had seen a lot of Hitchcock movies and decided he could make one just like them might turn out. Cary Grant or James Mason our leading man ain't but the disconnect between his obviously angelic mallrat looks and the manly deer hunting, wife beating, obsessive character he is asked to portray is most of the fun. The rest is laughing at how dense the chick is for winding up out there in the first place, and how once her brain cells start sparking a little she manages to get herself "the f*ck" out of the mess she is in. Enjoy. I did. :-)

A young couple gets married, and goes to honeymoon trip to the woods. Or a small cabin on a lake, whatever - in the middle of nowhere. The new husband turns out to have serious issues with social life, communication and his visions of life are just twisted. Julianne's honeymoon will turn into a true nightmare. She will find herself marooned and chained, the only way out is by swimming after wiping off the obstacles, Mitch being the biggest one.

The plot carries on nicely, it's not boring at all, just full of 'goofs', but if that doesn't matter, it's okay entertainment for evening. The biggest goof being how could she not know his boyfriend is a boy fiend indeed? They dated over one year before getting married, and this honeymoon brings out the true husband? The scary thing is, there actually exist people like this, both female and male..

Mitch's behavior is exactly like one from Criminal Minds. In my mind I created a small profile about him, heh.

The plot of this film seemed rehashed from a couple of other thrillers like Misery, The Collector, Single White Female and Sleeping with the Enemy. I give this film a fair rating because I'm an avid thriller fan, otherwise this would be harshly rated.

The film has a very standard, unoriginal plot, nearly just like other thriller; A girl is in danger from a guy, and she must try to escape from his clutches, except the location is wholly different, an isolated island.

The dialogue comes across as corny at parts. The acting by Tara Reid is pretty awkward at times, but she did a good job. The husband's acting was dull, and I thought him smoking in nearly every scene was annoying and distracting.

Although this film is less than 85 minutes, I thought it went for too long. There were some slow scenes throughout. I didn't like how every time she tries to escape and he taunts her, yet she still loves him - though at the end though she fakes it. I mean, from the first fight, she shouldn't even have forgave him. She should've tried to escape from the beginning, really, as there was nothing nice about him.

Besides those flaws, the film was pretty suspenseful at parts, which that was helped by the tense and adrenaline pumping score. For a TV film, it did have good scenes of high tension and suspense. It's a fun thriller to watch, although it shouldn't be taken seriously.

The whole exotic, yet isolated, setting made it stand out from its predictabilities, clichés and slow scenes. And let's not forget the good direction and suspenseful moments - though it did needed more of those suspenseful scenes.