Reeker

Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before. Four teens set out on a road trip …

STOP.

OK. That’s just unfair. Let me go on a little longer.

They’re going to the “biggest party in the world” when their vehicle stalls and leaves them stranded out in the middle of nowhere…

STOP

Well. One of them is blind and they’re not all horny drug fiends.

OK. Go on.

They find an abandoned hotel and café where everyone has mysteriously disappeared…

STOP

I guess you get the idea.

The truth is there’s nothing terribly original or even scary in Reeker. The monster effects are anything but frightening. The acting is a bit above B level, but none of these characters are developed all that much to care about when they start getting picked off.

STOP

We passed that part of the review. We aren’t doing that anymore.

OK.

Reeker is not as good as I hoped, but not as bad as you might expect. Certainly I’ve seen it all before more times than Einstein could count, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. Michael Ironside is always a treat to watch, and even though the years are beginning to show, he delivers the only real performance in the film. He is terribly underused, likely because of the film’s budget. Now don’t get me wrong. None of these actors are all that bad; it’s just that none of them are particularly good either. It doesn’t help that they didn’t have much to work with. If all of this sounds like I’m on the fence with Reeker, then you’re probably right. There’s nothing about it that I hated, but I didn’t like it either.

As a reviewer it is perhaps more of a knock on a film when you leave it feeling this indifferent. When I hate a film it usually means it did reach me on some level even if it was on one I didn’t enjoy. Still, the filmmakers reached their viewer and left some impact. After watching Reeker I almost felt like I’d had amnesia and couldn’t remember what I had just seen over the last hour and a half. Reeker is also a difficult film to talk about and not reveal major spoilers. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but the ending is pretty much all this film really has going for it, and to spoil it now would deprive you of having any chance at all to enjoy the film. So rent it, don’t buy it, and decide for yourself; that is, if you remember what it was you just watched.

Video

Reeker is presented in an adequate 1.85:1 aspect ratio transfer. The bit rate was actually very respectable, staying in the 6 mbps range most of the time. There’s a bit of grain, and since much of the film occurs at night, it does get to be a problem. There are moments when darkness washes the film so badly I could not make out the detail I would have liked to see. Black levels are average. Contrast is at times almost nonexistent. Considering the equipment available to even the Indie filmmaker today, this is a below average image. The CG enhanced creature is very mundane, mostly because of poor f/x.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is also quite ordinary. There are some clever uses of surrounds, particularly to set up some of the “jump” moments, but mostly this is a pretty quiet mix. Dialog works well enough to understand.

Special Features

Making Of Reeker:: 11 minutes of “isn’t this just great stuff” banter that tells you nothing of any value.

Final Thoughts

I loved the end of the credits roll. Yes, I do watch credits. It says: “If you’re a movie reviewer and you’re uninspired enough to use the phrase ‘This movie stinks’ or any other lame pun/riff on the title ha ha ha”. You gotta love filmmakers with so little confidence in their project that they need to make a preemptive strike at the reviewers who were uninspired by the film. Truth is, I couldn’t say it any better. The film was uninspiring. It looked like it was made by some “crack head who hurts animals with Dahmer’s garden tools”.