Rating: 3/5
Trish and her brother, Darry, drive through the North Florida countryside in Trish’s 1960 Chevy Impala. Darry drives recklessly, stressing out Trish. An old truck one-ups him, tailgating as though trying to drive them off the road, but eventually passes. The experience reminds them of an urban legend about a couple who disappeared on prom night.
Later, they pass by the same old truck parked outside a church. From a distance, it looks like the driver is dumping bodies wrapped in blood-soaked sheets down a pipe. Trish grabs Darry’s cell phone, but it’s dead. The truck driver careens onto the road to chase them down. It slammed repeatedly into the back of the Impala, stressing me out because the car was in such good condition.
Any sane human would check the car, wait a while for the truck to get some miles ahead, and continue. They could reach a payphone and call the police to investigate. But Darry is a horror movie character, so he convinces Trish to return to the church and see what the truck driver dumped.
You know the part in scary movies where somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it.
Trish and Darry’s antagonistic but loving sibling relationship is a clever start to the movie. By the time the action starts, we have solid characterization and expectations around their responses, no matter how ridiculous they may feel.
The first act has top-notch pacing. It’s one of the best starts to a horror movie I’ve seen from this era. The fakeout scares are not throwaway cliches but slow burns that give the audience enough time to get caught up in the fear.
Is this the movie that made Justin Long a scream queen? Because he’s great in this! Darry is annoying, but believably so. He gets to be the “hysterical” one that no one believes.
The movie pivots hard after a point. I’ll discuss this further in the spoiler section below. It doesn’t get terrible, but it’s such a departure from what I liked that it’s disappointing.
** SPOILER TALK ** Due to budget cuts, the writer rewrote the third act during production. So, instead of whatever the original plan was, we have a psychic black woman show up to explain away the monster. Then, we have an epic battle with the creature, which happens entirely over police radios. When we see it, it looks like a Buffy monster of the week.
You’re telling me this monster that has been hiding for decades, feeding in the dark, suddenly makes itself known to police forces in multiple counties because it wants to eat Justin Long’s eyes?