Talon Falls

This was a solid, if not unremarkable, crazy backwoods people horror movie. I liked the set, which I understand is a real haunted house attraction in Kentucky. The setting had a lot of great atmosphere. I also liked the choice of music that played a significant role in the story.

Where I think this movie struggles in the acting by the leads and the story. The two main actresses don't do much more than scream throughout most of the story. Neither really does much to make her character different or memorable. In fact, the screaming was so annoying by the time we arrived at the climax of the story, that I did not feel bad for their disposition. The supportive acting wasn't so much acting as walking and swinging an axe. The bad guys had no development whatsoever.

This leads to the bigger issue - the story. It borrows heavily from the "House of 1000 Corpses" which itself borrowed from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and other slasher movies. The scheme is so complex that it makes the puzzles in "Saw" seem practical. If you think about why this haunted house exists or how it can sustain itself or how the killers could have video tapes of victims going back for years without anyone figuring this out, the story falls apart.

I watched the whole movie and it was kind of fun, but it is dumb as a box of hammers.

It's a rip off of Funhouse Massacre, but it's still enjoyable. The music definitely elevates it significantly. If you haven't checked out Mr. Strange yet, you definitely need to give them a listen. This movie is free on Prime right now, so if your options are watching a repeat or this, give Talon Falls a try.

Heading out for a road-trip together, a group of friends out for a camping trip get detoured to a local amusement park along the way, where they are captured by the organizers of the carnival and kept to be used as unwitting and unnoticed victims in the event, forcing them to try to escape the group.

For the most part, this one was a solid enough effort. The initial start here comes from them arriving at the funhouse attraction in the amusement park which is rather fun and chilling. Starting off with the usual carnival attractions as they tour the maze filled with ghouls and deformities popping out of the darkness to scare people, messing with the lights going out constantly and featuring plenty of blaring noises constantly around them, there's some cheesy fun with the setup that allows for their shock at the scenes of the kidnapped victims they see being tortured along the way which they don't realize are real people being tortured. The nature of it is effective and gives this a strong introduction to the later scenes inside the park. Once they get kidnapped and held captive, there's a strong sense of brutality that comes about here due to the torture that's inflicted. The scenes of them being held down in the steel cages with the guard dog and then taken out to be put on display in the carnival attraction adds a wholly disturbing tension to the scenes as they try to wait out a plan of action to move forward and escape. The plan is a logical enough endeavor with the general idea of distraction and ambush providing this with plenty of action and logical enough twists to showcase the organization to be right there on their tails and delivering several solid and outright thrilling scenes of them chasing each other through the back-alleys of the carnival. With some great gore as well, these here make for a lot to like here. There are several big flaws with this one. One of the main issues is the fact that the entire operation makes no sense how it's operating as long as it has been going through victims the way they are. The idea here is that every one of the shows they put on within the community has been done with the group torturing and killing victims they've grabbed along the way from the pile of corpses left in the woods nearby which makes no sense how they've dumped bodies in the area with little regard to their discovery. That also dives into the cliched nature of the film as there are so many scenes and setups that emerge here taking its cues from other efforts that it diminishes the suspense heavily, especially the ending twist which doesn't come off as any kind of shocking action at all. These here are what hold this one down.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

It starts out like a typical horny-teens-take-a-road-trip-to-a-backwater-town horror flick and initially I only stuck around because the guy playing Lance is a hottie but it actually turned out to be a pretty decent movie. What also helps is its relatively short running time of less than an hour and a quarter. The acting is typical of this genre but that's not necessarily a distraction.

As a local, I was wanting to hate this movie. I live within 3 miles of this haunted house, and have been to the new one as well as the old one they had in Paducah, Ky. From the very beginning I had a good laugh with the country store. A store my boys went to at least once a month from pre-k to 6th grade with the elementary school across the street. Then the drive from the store to the haunted house, with it getting dark on the 3 1/2 minute drive from one place to the other. But, as I said i was expecting to hate it, but it was redeeming. It has a decent story line. Much more then I was expecting. The acting was not horrible. Again as a local and running across abandoned trailer parks out in the middle of no where, missing people that haven't been found in years, it makes you wonder what may be going on in the area....... It makes you stop and think about some of these rural haunted houses you go to out in the middle of no where. Some of them credit cards are not excepted. Hmmmm i wonder why. Can't trace you back if no name involved. Your in the country, you think they don't have connections with the local tow company, just around the corner from the country store. Cell phones, what service?????? You're not within reach of a tower. Some haunted houses are scary. Sometimes the area around you is scarier.