Reeker

Man was this a chore to get through. It’s both a shameless rip off of any number of much better movies, and filled with such sad attempts at juvenile humor that, had I not already decided to review it before putting it in the DVD player, I probably would have left it partway through to eat until I felt happier. You people have no idea what I go through in life, watching drivel like this, so that you can be better informed and know not to.

The plot concerns a group of college kids that join up together to share expenses on a road trip to a big festival type party, only to have their van break down in some isolated road where they run afoul of a shambling monster called the Reeker that goes around killing them one by one. It’s called the Reeker because it smells so terrible that its scent warns them whenever it’s nearby. Not exactly a film that understands the concept of ‘subtlety’, they show its odor not only by having the characters mention it, but also by having them start coughing really unconvincingly like the actors had seen movies of people smelling really foul things but had never personally experienced anything worse than a gassy fart. Just in case that wasn’t enough to drive the point across, however, the creature also shimmers in the sun like a mirage, as the director evidently decided that his special effects budget would best be put to use by animating stink lines around it. This is the kind of delightful quality this film brings to the table.

It also features a blind character for the sole reason of repeatedly letting us know that his other senses are super enhanced like Daredevil now, so they can all handily use him to sniff out the beast just in time for it to kill another of them. Add to this an opening throwaway death scene of a family that was so beyond clumsily handled and awful that I wanted to return the movie right then and there, and an ending that shamelessly rips off Jacob’s Ladder by way of Dead End, which accomplished nothing but to remind me of much better movies I could have been watching right then. It is a big, confused, muddled mess of a film, with no redeeming values to it at all. Do not see this film.

Rating: Zero stars