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Five students share a car ride to a large rave party taking
place in the Nevada desert. Trip is on the run from a notoriously
violent drug dealer after stealing pills worth many thousands
of dollars. After passing a road accident and stopping at
a diner, driver Gretchen finds out about the pills and pulls
over to the side of the road, threatening to dump him in the
middle of nowhere. Cookie, Nelson and Jack try to dissuade
Gretchen, and she relents by driving them back to the diner.
Curiously, there is no one in evidence, and all of the overnight
stay rooms are empty. Having lost all their fuel via a damaged
fuel pipe on the car, they are left effectively stranded.
None of the phones work - not even their mobiles. They decide
to take advantage of the facilities, but then they find a
number of rotting dead animals. A trucker arrives looking
for his missing wife, but there is no chance to escape before
an ethereal and highly malevolent figure stinking of death
and corruption arrives to pick them off in a particularly
gristly manner...
The
opening sequence of this film makes the new version of The
Hills Have Eyes resemble Bambi. It must
have the hardest-hitting first five minutes I've seen in a
movie for a long time. A car hitting a deer in the middle
of the road and covering the windscreen in thick red blood;
a man with half of his head missing; and a whining dog dragging
the rump where its back legs had so recently been (don't worry,
if you check out the photo gallery you'll see that the dog
normally wears a harness, pulls itself along on wheels and
looks perfectly happy). I wondered if this could be one of
those rare breeds that kicks the horror genre into a new and
original direction every so often. Unfortunately, it soon
regresses into a formulaic pattern.
The
characters are typical of any teen horror flick. There's the
sensible one, the party-loving animal, the dangerous one,
the cool dude, and the disabled (blind) one. Although this
could be a cross-section of teen society, it does seem rather
forced here. The wait-until-the-end-for-everything-to-make-sense
inverted plot is not exactly common place, but it has been
used several times since The Sixth Sense. For the format:
take a large portion of Dead
End (one of those genre-turning films I mentioned
earlier), add Jason from the Friday
the 13th films, sprinkle on Final Destination
and stir vigorously.
Having
pointed out its shortcomings, however, I must make it clear
that Reeker is far from being a bad movie. There are
several enjoyable elements, including the Reeker itself, which
is particularly well realised - although, considering the
reveal of the ending, I still didn't fully understand its
affinity for power tools. Perhaps it tied-in with the manner
of deaths at the end. As an added bonus even Michael Ironside
doesn't play the expected villain. So, in conclusion, a better
than average horror offering from a new writer/director (which
is always to be encouraged), but hardly original.
Special
features include a commentary with cast and crew; a Making
of Reeker featurette (11 mins); a Teaser Trailer;
Photo Gallery; Cast & Crew Biographies; and
Trailers for other releases.
On
a final note, the end credits carry this message: "If
you're a film reviewer and you're uninspired enough to use
the phrase "This movie stinks" or any other lame pun/riff
on the title - ha ha ha." I'd just like to say I'd never
reduce myself to using such crass remarks. There's a better
class of reviewer at Sci-fi-online (ahem). The director's
gone and upset me now... sniff. Oops!
Ty
Power
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