The Undertow (2003)

Disappointment for a huge fan!

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Six friends enter the strange town of Old Mines for a weekend float trip. They quickly realize that the town is not friendly to strangers, and they are pressured to leave by the police. When the friends decide to continue their float trip anyway, terrifying secrets of the town surface. A seven-foot-tall deformed maniac, known by the townsfolk as The Boy is kept under lock and key by the town's mayor. The Boy's purpose is simple: kill outsiders. The Mayor of Old Mines releases The Boy and the maniac's hunt begins. One by one, the campers on their float trip are ripped to gory shreds by the enraged, deformed, hulking Boy.Gore is the main focus of the film and there are only a few good kills in it. The first crushed head was amazing; other than that there's lots of severed limbs, eye gouging, stomach gouging, and a steak through the head. The gore effects were pretty cool, but there wasn't nearly enough.The young director and crew show some promise, but they need to polish up on the basics first. Camera: A lot of the film was incredibly shaky. I'm sure it was done on purpose, but it really didn't work for the best. There were some creative angles here and there though that were kind of neat.Edit: On one side we have some really cool grainy effects, but other than that a few edits were off by a little bit.Lighting: The picture was way too white in a ton of the scenes.Music: The best part of the technical features. Really cool background music and effects here.Acting: This is what I was expecting to cringe at. Fortunately it wasn't too bad at all. All of the main characters were on the same b-movie sub-par level. The town folk were unnatural and some of the lines were crappy, but the acting surprisingly didn't take away from anything. No one stood out as good or bad, so good job.Final Thoughts: There wasn't a kill or scare of any kind until 46 minutes into it. There was way too much sappy pointless dialogue where there should of been pointless gore and killing. Some of the scene ran too long and at times the artsy type of editing was not working at all. For a sub-rosa movie...it was alright though. Next time focus on the gore because without real actors the dialogue and story won't work for you. Jeremy Wallace and Eric Stanze's efforts seem to be getting better and better...hopefully one of these days they can really put something nice together..I hope they keep it up and keep improving.

As you all know I am a big supporter of the independent scene. Now and then a gem pops up and them I am glad to have it in my collection, mostly signed and personalized by the director. But sometimes the trailer is better than the movie itself. This flick have this problem. When you watch the trailer you have seen it all, and the teaser that Eric Stanze (Scrapbook) is involved only makes it worser. By involving Stanze geeks are really thinking that they will get gore from beginning until the end. It isn't, the movie fails in delivering a hillbilly gorefest, due the storyline and due the performances. The storyline can be told in a few sentences. Six friends go camping but at the wrong place at the wrong time. End of story. When they've been killed the acting fails. When one of the girls is seeing her friend dead,his head smashed by the killer, the way she reacts fails. The other problem with the movie is when you start watching it you can see immediately the low budget problems. When they walk into the sun, the iris of the camera isn't correct, they don't use ND filters. Wrong, and when they scream the sound goes into red. But you can see through this by saying, okay, no budget, but the car scene is too long, the cop scene, too long. In fact it takes the last 25 minutes before something really happens, before the slaying starts. But when it starts it's all done in a gory way. Intestines flying away, heads crushed by bricks. Girls smashed in their face with bare fists. And that's the only reason why I gave it a 4. Could have been much better.

For an extremely low budget movie, this flick was pretty good. The sound is shoddy in spots (a boom Mic could have been the answer)and the night (dark) scenes appear a little grainy. The acting wasn't terrible(not saying it's good either), but the actors themselves were pretty ugly. There's some effects that made no sense to me during dialog, like when Billy visit's the campers and tells them of what's going on in the town. During her story they kept cutting to the campfire with an annoying high pitched noise. I'm not sure what they were trying to achieve with this. However, I like the story, as it has that classic early 80's babes in the woods getting stalked by maniac that has an obvious deformity type of plot. The killer is very reminiscent of Jason in Friday the 13th Part 2. It's kind of like a Jason and Leatherface character mixed together. There's plenty of gore in this one too.

A group of friends go camping, but they're soon to find out that the locals don't take too kindly to city folk. Ok, it's far from an original concept, but I'm always delighted when I find an independent film that exceeds my expectations. Especially an indy of the horror genre, which is abundant and for the most part all crap. But this is one of those rare birds that stands head & shoulders with the "big boys". Taking me back to the glory days of '70's-type horror films. It lacks action for a good half of the film, but the characterization more then compensates. And when the gore DOES arrive, it does in spade! In many (if not all) ways better then the same year's "Wrong Turn"My Horror Grade: B+DVD Extras: Behind-the-scenes; Blooper Reel; Deleted scenes; Stills gallery; two versions of the theatrical trailer; Trailers for "Christmas Season Massacre", "China White Serpentine", "I spit on your corpse, I piss on your grave", "Insaniac", "Savage Harvest", "Ice from the Sun", and "Scrapbook" PLUS 3 Easter Eggs for you to find "River Hound" (short clip of a dog); "On Location" and "Bonk/ Stanze"