Classic Horror
I really enjoyed this film, it stuck we me for days. I also read a great review from Melissa Lafsky of THE HUFFINGTON POST that was on the money. Thought I would share:
"Sam's Lake," a boiler plate horror film with an inventive and original twist, presents no prescient topic or overarching moral question heavier than "Why the hell do people in scary movies always decide to snoop around the excessively creepy deserted house in the middle of the night?" Shot in a mere eighteen days in the woods bordering Toronto, Andrew C. Erin's film delivers all the campy thrills so expensively (and often falsely) promised by large studio productions, including high speed chases through dark forests, screaming victims, gory sound effects and believably formidable psychopaths. Granted, you have to make it through the plodding setup, forty minutes of trite dialogue and banal editing tricks that could have been lifted from a dozen horror flicks, before the actual fun starts. But once it arrives, you can forget any eye-rolling and simply enjoy.
The plot initially unfurls like a film school horror checklist. On the one-year anniversary of her father's untimely death, the beautiful young Sam (Fay Masterson) invites four of her equally young, equally attractive friends to spend a weekend at her family's remote cabin, tucked away on the mysterious Sam's Lake. Little do they know that a madman is rumored to lurk in the surrounding woods, snatching away unsuspecting residents and leaving in their places stick-figure cornhusk dolls that he could have learned to make during an arts and crafts seminar taught by the Blair Witch. Erin delivers every facet of the standard formula with great pain, down to the eerie backwoods town, the "Deliverance"-esque shopkeeper who warns the dubious city-dwellers that "these parts ain't safe this time of year," and carefully edited shots of the unwashed killer darting through patches of spooky trees. The group arrives at Sam's cabin, more disintegrating shanty than rustic weekend getaway, and eventually discovers that something is amiss, while the audience starts to pass the time predicting which of them will die, in what order and by what grisly method.
When it arrives, the plot twist hits so rapidly that cries of "Wait, what's happening?" rose from my neighbors in the theater. Thanks to adept editing and believable acting, the scene works, effectively transforming the film into a fast-paced thriller peppered with the requisite dying gurgles and bloody gushes. It's not subtle or particularly profound, but it is fun, and after a few hours of rehashing Jonestown and suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge, I'd say we're all entitled to a little light enjoyment.
I caught the film during the screenings at Tribeca. Really great flick.