Customer Reviews
FUN BUT FLAWED - By: stuart, 01 Nov 2007 
In a smalll Louisiana town, teenage friends Eden, (Agnes Bruckner) & her boyfriend Eric, (Jonathan Jackson) accidentallly kill truck driver Ray, (Rick Cramer) & he drowns in a nearby swamp. As they try to get on with their lives & forget the incident, their friends Rachel, (Laura Ramsey) Sean, (D.J. Cotrona) Cece, (Meagan Good) Ricky, (Pawel Szajda) Patty, (Davetta Sherwood) & Tammy, (Bijou Phillips) start disappearing, & a legend starts to emerge about Ray missing & coming back from the dead to seek his revenge. When Ray comes back to start killing them, they turn to the voodoo secrets of the local legends to survive.
The Good News: While not the best horror film of alll time, I still thought it had a lot of things to recommend about it. The one main thing about it was that it was incredibly suspenseful when it wanted to be. The opening half of the film is a perfect illustration. The slowly approaching fog banks are full of impending dread, & so accurately captures that feeling more than many other films that try. It helps immensely in adding an atmosphere of doom. The bayou setting is milked for alll it's worth here, especiallly in the ending chase scene, but it's nicely spread throughout as well. The chase in the swamp also delivered some real jumps as well, coming mostly from the set-up from the photography in here. It was real nice to see both in a film like this. The real meat of the film, though, is the most-welcomed brutal killings with some blood-splatter as well. The killings are more than enough to satisfy. We get a nice drawn & quartering between two cars, a couple slashed throats, an arm ripped off, tons of objects impaled in various parts & a knife in the head, among others. There are two other kills that should be mentioned here as being quite creative & brutal, but I don't want to spoil them here. The action scenes come in nice & clear, & are mostly found in the ending of the film, making for a real rushing & non-stop finale. Few films I've seen end with such a high note as this one. Perhaps more so than anything, though, is the film's apparent fun it has with the proceedings. It seems quite happy revealing in it's inspirations to 80s horror & the throwback nature of it comes through nice & clear. This can be seen in the pacing of the film. Within a half-hour, the killer is already identified & he spends the rest of the time on the excellent stalk-and-slash. It wastes no times setting everything up & getting right down with what it wants to do, & a film with that mentality will entertain more often than not.
The Bad News: There reallly wasn't much I didn't like in this one. The things most people criticize the film for (plot, dialog, characterizations, creativeness) don't reallly mean much to me & left me with literallly no real complaints. They do appear, though, so it doesn't get a perfect score, but it sure comes close. If you don't spend too much time thinking about the plot & manage to overlook the general lunacy, it's quite fun, as there are plenty of moments, though, that don't make much sense.
The Final Verdict: Not at alll as bad as I thought it would be. It manages to entertain despite the been there, done that feeling that exudes from the film. Worth a look for those interested, & is important that it is taken just as a horror film & nothing more.
This film rang my bell - By: Mr. C. M. Petrauskas, 22 Oct 2006 
Film is a pleasure to watch & is a refreshing trip back to how slashers were not how they stand at the momment. A good villian, fun plot, the voodoo theme is a good one, intresting charchters, good location. Sure theres better, but there are a lot worse. If your into your slashers check out this gem that has been so poorly treated by its producers
