Rish Outfield's reviews
Hey HFC-ers, before I say anything more, let's get two things out of the way: 1) This is a terrible title. I don't care how well you think it fit into the story or how much your grandparents loved the song, the title sucks. And 2) I try to put a filmmaker's personal politics or history behind me when I watch these things... Okay, that couldn't be further from the truth, but in this case, I did as best as I could. I heard about the film from a friend, was intrigued (he pitched a good show), and tried to ignore what I knew about certain forces behind the film and go to it with an open mind. In fact, I won't even say anymore about it.
Okay, let's see. Gina Phillips and Justin Long star as two siblings on their way home from college who a) are terrorized by a faceless truck driver, and b) investigate when they see said truck driver dumping a body into a pipe alongside the road. Unpleasantness follows.
This film did extremely well its opening weekend (but it came out in ‘01, the year everyone will remember as the Year of the Big Opening Weekend Followed by Nothing), and I had heard it was really scary. Like I said before, I wanted to see it from the moment I heard about it, so I went as soon as I could, dragging along a new friend (who I hope to see many of these movies with in the future). Beyond that, what can I tell you about the film? I enjoyed (for the most part) the idea of doing a film with only two major characters (reminded me in a way of Duel), and these two weren't all bad. With the exception of the monster, this struck me as a very low budget film. And I've nothing against those. It seemed a bit more of a throwback to the horror films that used to be made (except for one obligatory moment when the girl says, "This is the part of the scary movie where someone does something really dumb and you hate them for it.")
I gave away what the Threat was up above (sorry), but that was something of a letdown. As much as the Devil and aliens and evolved spiders and lawn gnomes are scary, I don't think there's anything quite as frightening as a human being. So, when I thought the bad guy was a man, it was scarier than when he was revealed to be . . . whatever it was. The makeup wasn't bad (if a little too reminiscent of the "Wishmaster"), but once we saw the thing's face, he ceased to be scary in my mind.
The story had its problems: The psychic character served absolutely no purpose, then goes as far as to tell us that when her scene is through. Hey, where'd the axe go? There was a lack of logic (which many of this type of film suffers from), especially on the part of the killer. One very frightening scene is ruined by a reveal of dead bodies that were probably only mannequins, but looked just like mannequins. There was an overabundance of (what I am now going to call) You Stupid Bitch, You Deserve To Die moments. As likable as these kids were (and they could have cast frigging Haley Joel Osment and Shirley Temple in these roles and I still would've been screaming at them), they went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to sticking their heads into wasps' nests to see if they made honey. The entire time the killer was on their trail, it seemed like they were always thinking of reasons to slow down, stop, or go backward. The scene where Trisha decides to drive over the killer instead of away from him worked quite well, though.
There were a lot of groans at the end of the film. Not from me (I thought the final image was immensely disturbing and brave as hell), but it did seem to fly in the face of what makes a crowd-pleaser, especially since the pace of the script built up expectations for a kind of ending very different from the one we got.
Even so, I'm SURE that in the near future (and I don't need a fat psychic who really did nothing but spout exposition to help me), we'll be seeing a direct-to-video sequel wherein some new unlucky travelers stumble across our winged friend.
Best Scare: They ripped off my favourite scare from I Know What You Did Last Summer, so I'm going to go with simply the image of what could only be wrapped human bodies being dumped into a pipe at the side of the road.

The tyranist's thoughts
Saw the trailer for the sequel that will hit theatres soon and decided that I'd put off seeing this one long enough. I don't really have too much to add to what Rish has already said, but I'm going to say it anyway.
This was fun and atmospheric in a way that a lot of post-modern horror doesn't seem to be able to achieve. The monster was sometimes scary sometimes just weird, but the kids were so likable that I couldn't help but fear for them. Interestingly I could have done without any of the incidental characters and feel that most of them deserved their pitiful deaths.
The script seemed well-conceived except for that stupid song that it takes its title from. I was a little disappointed by the end of the movie, but it wasn't all bad, just kind of predictable and not really as frightening as I think they wanted it to be.
There were stretches where this reminded me of Candyman, which is a good thing since I think Candyman was about the only really scary horror movie between the modern and post-modern horror film periods (maybe there's an essay in that, you probably have no idea what I mean by modern and post-modern). Anyway, it obviously wasn't too parallel, but the atmosphere was what did it. Not that the inner-city and an abandoned country road have the same atmosphere, but that they were able to so effectively use the environment to contribute to the horror of the piece.
This one is really worth checking out, especially if you plan to catch the sequel in the theatre this summer. I missed this one on the big screen, but now I'm thinking I'll have to catch the follow-up there.