I had written positively but concisely about director Ti West’s first film (at comment #4), and I kind of kept an ear to the ground about his subsequent work. And last year, his second work–more restrained, in his words an attempt to strip away all the common tactical conventions of scare movies–got a good review here and a real rave from Scott Foundas here. So I was really looking forward to it.
I liked but didn’t love it; Foundas called it “Old Joy reconceived as a horror movie,” and that’s a fine mash-up pitch. The movie begins at a slow but dread-suffused pace, and takes about thirty minutes to get us well into the woods, wandering with three misplaced urbanites looking to hunt. And it’s never much of a thrill-ride, instead opting for a very deliberate white-knuckle approach to its conventional plot (the hunters start to get hunted). I liked its sense of dread, I loved its HighDef hand-held look, and I loved its disinterest in motive, backstory, resolution. Apparently shot on just over a dime (and produced by Larry Fessenden, who’s maybe the Orson Welles of indie horror films), it’s another solid small alternative for us horror fans not so into the Saw franchise or endless watered-down remakes of East Asian horror.
And it’s not Guy Ritchie, so that’s another plus.
Let’s put all comments about the most dangerous game here. El Rey de la Montana is tighter in pacing, more keen on more conventional suspense than the above, but it’s in the same genre of “snipers hunting passersby in the woods.” But these woods are in Spain.
Montana has a smart ’70s exploitation vibe, but is light on gore, or any of the accoutrements of sleaze — it’s more attuned to the emotional impact than a more sensational exaggeration of the situation… and it plays up the existential histrionics. It has a little twist two-thirds of the way through, something I don’t want to spoil although probably none of you will see this anyway, so move away now if you don’t want this minor detail revealed, don’t want to know that it’s kids doing the hunting… OH! Oh man. Sorry. Yeah, maybe we could have another thread on kids killing adults. It’s kind of cool that the kids here are not vicious killing machines — they seem almost innocent, playing their first-person shooter games, but with live ammo and live prey. Still, all this leads to an “emotional” end which keeps it bleak but also seems kind of … weepy. The lead actor cries a lot, and it began to annoy me. If you’re looking for a more unnerving snipers-hunting-people film, check out Trigger Man. And re murderous kids, I prefer ’em unrepentantly alien and brutal in their motivations — as in Ils, The Strangers, and (I hear, and hope) Eden Lake.