Devil's Mile

I read the reviews before I watched it, and I almost didn't watch it, but I felt like watching some rubbish, and you know, I'm glad this was it.

Not because it's rubbish, but because there's so much more here than meets the eye.

It starts out simple enough, after the grab, after the kidnapping. There's a tiny hint, a little bit of predestination, and a fair bit of creepy at that.

The actresses are pretty good, the actor playing the male kidnapper is not quite as good, but he's passable, and the two other men do a reasonable job actually.

There are twists in this movie. One made me feel clever because I saw it coming even if I couldn't tell you why. The other... the other slipped right past me...

I actually recommend watching this. It's a pleasant little gem.

Oh the genre of horror! There is no other genre of film that can lead to such profound disappointment, especially for fans like myself. Every year there are hundreds of so called "horror" films made around the world. Unfortunately of those hundreds of films it seems only 4 or 5 will be worth watching. Really scary! The kind of film that makes you jumpy for a couple of weeks after seeing it. While you take a shower you wonder if when you open your eyes after rinsing off the shampoo you'll see a silhouette on the other side of the shower curtain. Or after you start your car at night you'll see another set of eyes in your rear view mirror. They make you hyper aware of every sound in your apartment or house as you close you eyes to go to sleep.

This is not one of those films.

If you are not at all a horror film watcher & prefer movies like Ice Age or Nut Thief or whatever that recent Pixar film is called then this film might, **just might**, seem scary to you. Maybe. You'd have to scare pretty easily though.

I'm giving this movie at least 2 stars because the premise is a good one. Pretty original really. Some kidnappers take a short cut on a highway that turns out to be the highway to hell! The kidnapping gets botched and innocent people die. They are forced to confront their actions by supernatural forces bent on exacting revenge. Well, sort of. It get's really really, muddled near the end. In fact by the end it doesn't make any since at all.

And when I say "it doesn't make any since at all" I don't mean that in the "it got all weird and artsy" sense so you have to figure it out way, no, I simply mean it seems like the writers gave up and said "F**K it, End it, we're running out of cocaine and Jules said he will be out of contact after 6pm"....but then one of the interns had a couple of bumps so they kept writing for like 30 minutes and came up with the brilliant ending that you really shouldn't waste any of your life waiting for.

I'm not discouraging you from watching this film. I'm just saying if after you've watched it for 41 minutes and find yourself asking "Is this ever going to get any better?" The answer is NO. It only gets worse,

Let me premise this by confessing I am a huge horror fan. I don't consider my time wasted watching what casual and occasional horror viewers probably consider rot. I'm not sure why, but I finished this. I think I just wanted to know where all this aimless wandering ended up. It had some redeemable moments. And the ending may have been the most concise part of the film.

Sometimes I watch a movie because I'm doing something else that's fairly dull and want a little action. That was my reason for watching "Devil's Mile" on Amazon. Adjusting from 5 scale on Amazon to 10 scale on IMDb, the viewers there are giving it a 7.2. Now that I've seen it, I have to agree.

The standard creepy elements are all there. This film isn't breaking any new ground, but then that's never stopped people from making and watching movies before. There are even things I was predicting that showed up as expected. It's actually when the female leads get talking seriously that the story moves along. There's a creepy dude that shows up in what seem like flashbacks. He only really begins to make sense to the story when you get near the end... and I did not predict the end.

This movie simply is not as bad as the overall ratings make it out to be. But then, consider the limited number of reviews this film has had.

Captures the descent into Hell nature of a Lovecraftian story. Modern setting and rugged desert enhance what is a standard story of kidnapping, organized crime, and sweet maddening inferno. Doesn't quite come together enough for a better rating. Watchable but not necessarily recommendable.