- Directed by Justin Lee
- Written by Justin Lee
- Stars Ed Morrone, Crash Buist, Tony Todd
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqA5w87i4tM
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
They raided the “Horror Actors Retirement Home” for the cast of this film, and the old stars are the main draw here; it’s like a 1980s horror film reunion. On the other hand, once you get past that gimmick, there’s not too much to the story itself. It’s pretty good, pretty entertaining, but not really great.
Commentary
This takes place in the 1980s (probably only so there’s no cell phones to deal with), and 85-year-old Bruce Dern is wearing a Vietnam veteran’s cap and talking about, “I seen some shit in the war”; he must’ve been around 70 in that war.
Time flies, I guess, even for actors. Courtney Gains, the hillbilly-looking kid from “Children of the Corn” and “The Burbs” is now playing a grumpy old man who can’t keep his dog on a leash. I guess that all really was forty-ish years ago.
Tony Todd, Adrienne Barbeau, Billy Zane, Meg Foster, Bruce Dern, John Kassir, and others stop by for their quick cameo paychecks. Really, the whole thing seems to be a patchwork of scenes involving various old-timers stitched together with the common element of Sheriff Joe investigating the cultists – Ed Morrone has a history of distinct roles, and he’s good in this one. This kind of thing has been done before, but this movie is better than most attempts.
The acting is fine for this type of not-quite-serious-but-not-really-a-parody film, although the pacing does drag a bit toward the end when we run out of guest stars to kill. It becomes a little repetitious fighting the cultists who all look alike. Which makes them pretty uninteresting really, even though there seems to be an infinite number of them. The monster has hints of greatness, but doesn’t really do enough. And we couldn’t decide if they simply forgot about Adrienne Barbeau’s character or if she died offscreen for some reason.
Spoilery Synopsis
It’s the 1980s.
A group of cultists stand around a fire and start a ritual as Joshua leads the group and sacrifices a man. Old Bill Unger is visiting his long-dead wife’s grave and hears the sacrifice the group is doing… on his property! They all watch as the demon beast crawls out of the fire and towers above Joshua, who reads from the book. Joshua’s surprised the whole thing works while Bill tells his dead wife that they’ve got a big problem.
Joe Anderson’s the town’s new sheriff, here from the big city to enjoy the quiet. The deputies discuss rabid animals and bats. Deputy Teddy has a crush on Deanna, who works at the diner. Harry comes into the diner and wants to know about the new sheriff.
Bill comes into the sheriff’s office and complains about the cultists trespassing on his property. He describes the ritual in long, slow, excruciating detail, including the monster. Sheriff Joe takes some aspirin and wishes he’d stayed home today and just can’t quite keep a straight face.
Sheriff Joe goes to see Georgia, the local radio station’s DJ. She stays on top of all the local news, and she mentions that some guy went missing last night outside of town. Teddy goes out looking for Bernard’s lost dog and sees cultists in the fields that vanish when he looks away.
Elsewhere, Charlie and Eleanor are killed by the demon. Old Bill confronts some cultists, but he’s got booby traps and landmines. Boom!
The monster, hiding in a barn somewhere, mutates and grows big horns. All the phones in town go dead. All the car batteries in town are gone as well.
Sheriff Joe and Deputy Liz go to Bill’s place and find body parts all over amongst the land mines. Back in town, Deanna and Teddy battle cultists. Harry shows up just in time to get stabbed repeatedly. The survivors gather at Deanna’s diner. They watch the surviving cultists drag the dead ones away to feed the monster.
Back at the diner, Bobby gets stabbed and they duct tape him back together, but that doesn’t stick. Sheriff Joe finally makes it back to town and kills a few more cultists on the way to the big beast, who is hiding in the Christmas tree farm. Joe shoots it with a rocket launcher confiscated from Bill years before.
Joe, Teddy, Deanna, and Cindy limp out of town heading for safety, completely forgetting about Georgia, who was back in the diner waiting for them to come back, I guess.
We flash over to the next town over, where Joshua stops in for breakfast. He hadn’t appeared at all since the very first scene, but it looks like he’s scouting out a place to make a fresh start.