Monday, November 28, 2011

Savage County (2010)

An MTV horror movie and not a vampire to be found?  I'll take it.  This movie desperately wants to be House of 1000 Corpses, even going so far as to have an extremely Otis Driftwood-like character (see left).  We begin the movie by letting everyone know that murder isn't new to this backwoods clan, and that they delight in tying up women and killing them slowly.

So for the premise?  Basically, there's a group of high school kids throwing a "party" over the weekend.  Somehow they have access to a house that's under construction, and a random area near a lake.  They use the house as their home base for partying, traveling over to the lake area for drinking and swimming.  Every stereotype is represented, from the Mc-Lovin type nerd to the sassy valedictorian to the cookie-cutter goth, to the Reggie Bush-looking football star.

As it so turns out, by their swimming spot is right near an infamous house full of homicidal hillbillies.  They taunt the banjo players, eventually enticing one of them to come out and attack the weakling of the group.  The quintessential sexy black football player fights back, killing the old hillbilly.  And we're in trouble I Know What You Did Last Summer-style. 

All the characters in this movie are pretty much insufferable.  They take annoying and self-absorbed teenagers to the next level.  I mean sure, they drink, get pregnant, and wear stupid clothes, but that's to be expected.  But throw in webcams and hipster music, and teenagers are even harder to deal with than usual.  The movie is pretty predictable, going back and forth between videotaped segments of tied-up high schoolers, to a cutesy grounded girl doing a vlog/DJing thing.  Naturally, the sheriff doesn't help, but only covers up the actions of the murderers. 

This wasn't completely unwatchable, but it was pretty regurgitated.  They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for teen talent, as most of the actors could barely do their lines with any sort of believability.  You could say they made the best of their $250K budget, but I'm glad this didn't become the ongoing series it was intended to be. 

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