- Directed by Pat Mills
- Written by Alyson Richards
- Stars Tommie-Amber Pirie, Sarah Allen, Rossif Sutherland, Aaron Ashmore
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCohLXFqGck
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The story is fairly basic, but it’s well made. The night scenes are a little too dark. It moves steadily without bogging down. It’s not great, but it’s satisfying overall. We’d give it a moderate thumbs up.
Spoilery Synopsis
An obviously gay couple drive through the country on the way to a vacation to a gay B&B. When they arrive, someone is already watching them from the woods. Something in the woods kills them both. Credits roll.
Renee tries to figure out the coffee machine and fails; she makes a cold instant instead. Then she goes in to wake up Valerie and hands her the cup full of swill.
The two women head out to the country and stop in a creepy convenience store. A guy hits on Valerie while Renee is in the bathroom. They are also driving to the gay B&B, which they found on a website. They get a flat tire, and Renee changes it, but they lose their balloons by accident. Connor and Scotty are the owners of the place, but they died before the credits.
Renee looks at all the male-gay stuff and sneers. The food basket laid out is rotten, and the house isn’t cleaned up; something is wrong.
They go for a walk in the woods, and we see that someone in the woods is watching them as well. They find a deer head strung up over the path, and they’re a little skeeved out by it. They see a deer blind, and they don’t approve of that either. Renee knows what it is because she used to be forced to hunt deer with the family.
They think they see someone in the woods, so they run back to the cabin. Renee’s car is gone and there are muddy footprints on the floor. Their phones are gone as well. There are people inside the house, so the two girls run back out to the woods, where they see Renee’s car sunk in the pond. They run and run until Valerie steps into a bear trap. There are a bunch of bear traps.
Renee can’t get the trap open, so she goes back to the car to get a crowbar as the sun goes down. Renee dives into the pond and finds the crowbar, but she sees someone out there with a rifle. By the time she gets back to the bear traps, Valerie is gone. Someone comes up behind Renee.
Renee wakes up later, all tied up in what looks like a barn. She can see out a window and looks at two men and a woman who seem to be in on the kidnapping. The woman brings Renee water, but she’s definitely not there to help. She calls Renee a disgusting pervert and then leaves.
We see that they have Scott tied up to torture; he’s not really dead yet. No wait, now he is, all clearly recorded on video.
Renee works at her bones and breaks her own thumb to get out of the cuffs. She spends about half an hour in the dark barn before she finds a way out. Of course, she’s on camera, and Layna, the woman accomplice, sees the whole thing. The two women wind up fighting and Renee gets the better of her “host.”
Renee gets out and hears Valerie screaming in another barn. Connor is there with her, and he’s still alive as well. James, the guy from the convenience store, puts on a helmet with a mask and chops Connor into pieces with an ax for their video camera. Layna staggers in and tells the two men that Renee has escaped, so they all go outside to look for her.
Renee, of course, is inside the barn and tries to get Valerie loose. They get organized and wait for their kidnappers to return. They might have been able to run away, but instead, they choose to stay and fight back.
Renee goes inside the house, with the lights on, and it’s still nearly too dark to see what’s going on. They look at the computer and they see that these people run a whole homophobic livestream with thousands of viewers. They pick up a big old computer monitor and smash Layna’s head with it. They ax James in the head, leaving only Gavin, the big one, behind.
The two girls find rifles and head back out into the woods to find Gavin. Renee wastes her two shots and Gavin gets the drop on her. He comes out of the woods, and Valerie shoots him from the blind stand. Renee drags him to the camera and makes sure she executes him for the homophobes to watch.
Renee and Valerie help each other to the road, where they flag down a truck for help. They get in the back of the truck and head to the hospital.
Commentary
The first half hour was fine; it all looked good and was nicely shot. Then the sun went down and things mostly happened in the dark.
I like that they fought back and didn’t simply try to run away. You know how in these movies, they whack the bad guy over the head, drop the weapon, and run away, only for the baddie to get up again? Not this time. It was also nicely paced and didn’t drag out more than it needed to.
On the other hand, it’s really just a fairly basic abduction-torture film. Other than nominal motivation for the baddies, the whole gay vs. homophobe thing is really pretty irrelevant here. In this kind of movie, the bad guys’ motivations don’t really matter anyway. I guess the director’s plan was to show how bad homophobia is, but it really just seemed like another kidnapping movie to me.
I liked the ending, but the movie is fairly bland otherwise.
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