I saw this a few days ago at the Fantasia Fest up here in Montreal. Quite a few members of the cast and crew were present, including the writer/director. The movie was made for a 'very low budget' which is why I hate to pan it but... I had heard this was a very different and utterly terrifying movie, but not much else. I love going into movies not knowing a thing about them so I was primed for this one. Now, for a low budget movie this thing looked great. The cinematography and lighting were really surprisingly good. The actors as well were mostly okay. However, this thing was not scary. For frights, the whole thing relies way too much on simple sound and music cues, the cinematic equivalent of someone sneaking up on you and yelling Boo! Some visuals were rather creepy (such as the young boy covered with blood) but were overused (that young boy is seen over and over until you start to forget that that's supposed to be blood all over him). The main problem with the film, however, is the script. It goes all over the place, introducing characters here and there and sending others on too-long treks which lead to very little. NOW, I'M GOING INTO SPOILERS HER SO STOP IF YOU CARE. For example, the sheriff running off into the woods seemed interesting and had potential...at first. But ran too long. The entire bus scenario was cool visually but served no purpose to the story other than to keep the deputy busy till the city-bloody-boy could get there and kill him. Then there were those laugh-out-loud moments: the deputy figuring out the cut-and-paste nature of the bloody-boy after staring at those photos for five minutes or so. And those burial grounds the cop dug wouldn't keep a Terrier from unearthing those corpses. But the script's biggest weakness is this: the killer. Why did she strip her victims and hang them from a tree before actually killing them. This has many sexual overtones, something you wouldn't expect from a little old woman acting out of revenge. And then...why in the hell did the bloody boy go to the sheriff's office? He is there to avenge the deaths of those he 'represents,' he knows who the killer is, so why does he not go find her rather than wasting his time sitting in the sheriff's office waiting for them to figure this muddled plot out? Sorry, I truly am...but this simply didn't work. Hell, it looked pretty though, and that was enough for Haute Tension to get picked up (Haute Tension had a much higher budget, though still pretty low by Hollywood standards, and so looked even better but its script, though fine and straight forward at first, falls flat at the end). It might make it on the cinematographer's obvious skills alone.
--Oleander Flimus
--Oleander Flimus