Customer Reviews

Reeker

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Stop me if you've heard this one before...a group of college kids are out on a road trip, traveling down a stretch of desert highway when their car breaks down and strands them. They then find themselves hunted down by a maniacal killer. Sounds like the plot of about hundred horror films except Reeker takes this tired plot and twists it into something surprisingly fresh and original. First, the leader of the group is a strong female lead, Gretchen (Tina Illman). Second, there are no gratuitous sex scenes or nudity in Reeker. The female characters Gretchen and Cookie are attractive but their not your typical horror movie dumb blondes. Even the male roles are nonconforming...the men aren't brawny jocks but regular guys who are just as terrified as the women are. One of them, Jack (Devon Gummersall) is even blind and has to rely on Gretchen to lead him about.

The five get stranded at a roadside diner/motel with not another person in site. The phones are dead and they can get only static on the radios. You start to wonder if this is some sort of an extraterrestrial phenomena. Reeker holds its cards extremely tight! The first hint of a threat is the smell of death that comes in waves of nauseous vapors that end in a character being shredded by a whirling blade. Finally an RV pulls into the diner. Henry (Michael Ironside) is looking for his wife who has been missing since morning. Henry seems to know more than he is letting on, however and the rest of the group are happy to let him stay locked in his RV. Reeker is a film that leads you in one direction, making you think you know exactly what is going on, and then pulls the rug out from under you and says, "Got Ya!" Without providing any spoilers, it's a film where you really need to pay attention to all the little details that you thought were not important. The hints are there if you look for them.

While the cast members are not household names (except perhaps for the fine character actor, Ironside) they are an experienced group with a lot of acting credits. Eric Mabius was in the first Resident Evil film and since has had numerous TV credits, most recently a recurring role in Ugly Betty. Gummersall as Jack presents a unique horror film male lead, a blind man who provides a calming influence on the rest of the terrified group.

It's not a terribly gory film but it uses the gore effectively, more for shock than for the sake of it. These scenes are meant to unsettle the viewer as opposed to merely spilling buckets of blood. In one part, Nelson finds a man yelling for help from inside a trash dumpster. He helps the old man out only to find that the man's body as seen severed at the waist and he merely goes crawling off on his hands as fast as he can.

Reeker is a solid, original horror film that will have you asking questions and re-watching it over just so you get the full effect of what is going on. A film that makes you think!

REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON

Reeker is in my list of good horror. It's not genius by any means, yes the idea has already been done. But as horror fans know great ideas get done over and over again until they become annoying or just plain stupid. There is never a dull moment whether it was the humor, the tension, good gore scenes, or the character developement. We have five teenagers that are all very different, A blind guy, a skater, a goody too shoes girl, a druggy, and a girl that likes to have fun. They are all interesting characters that can be quite funny. The druggy scream has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen or the fact that he doesn't believe the blind guy is blind for a long time, so he sends him into the ladies bathroom. I honestly think as a horror fan you have to have a very open mind. Otherwise you miss out on 90% of horror. Not all films can be as perfect as The Exorcist.

We start out with a family driving down the highway with the mom and son playing I spy. When the son states he spies something with a D, they slam into a deer in the road. After getting control of the vehicle they pull over to see the damages that occured. When the dog disappears the father goes to look for him. After a few seconds the dog comes back as only half a dog, the bottom half no longer attached. A moment of looking at the dog the mother goes to get up when her husband is standing in front of her with only half a face. The scene is ended with the father getting dragged away. After the family getting decimated we have five teenagers that are on their way to a party. They stop at a resturant to grab some food, then start off on their adventure . When the druggy states that he has enough pills on him to get a hundred people screwed up the girl driving drives him back to the resturant to find another way home. When trying to drive away they find they have run out of gas. Looking to find if someone has some gas they learn that the resturant is now deserted. So they decide to spend the night at the place until someone can find help. Not knowing the terror that awaits them, the five teenagers soon find out that there is something far beyond their comprehension waiting for the right moment to end their existence. Who can survive this unknown presence?

I usually never tell that much about a film, but I believe that the first scene in the movie is the best scene. There is also a toilet scene that horror fans will enjoy. There is some originality to Reeker, which makes up for the fact of it taking ideas from other great films. I do recommend this to everyone that can appreciate all horror.

REEKER is a movie written and directed by Dave Payne who was responsible for, among others, Alien Terminator in 1996 and Just Can't Get Enough: The True Story of the Chippendales' Murders in 2001. The plot of this horror film is far from being original : five students, stranded in the Californian desert, are attacked by an unknown entity and must fight it to survive.

The good news is that REEKER is not boring at all for several reasons. Firstly, we become soon eager to discover the identity of the bad guy as David Payne disseminates conflicting clues along the road such as the presence in the neighborhood of a drug dealer who's threatened earlier one of the passengers, the eventuality of the presence of a serial killer in the vicinity or the possibility of an hypothetical biochemical disaster. Another strange clue introduced to the confused audience is the alteration or the distortion of the space-time continuum when a murder is about to be committed.

The movie's direction is professional, the actors pretty good for this kind of production, and the special effects don't interfere too much with the action. Those of you who liked REEKER's final twist should see Marc Forster's Stay that handles some of the themes presented here by David Payne.

A DVD zone why not ?

**SPOILERS**

College age humans on the way to a big bash get together for a road trip and end up stuck at a deserted diner/motel in the middle of the desert(hard to believe.....).

This movie starts out in ridicules fashion with a mom driving her husband and son driving through the desert and the mom hits a deer standing in the middle of the road. Someone then throws a bucket of fake blood all over the windshield as they show a very poor imitation prop deer fall to the side of the road dead. Now that the mom cannot see anything at all after just hitting an animal does she hit the brakes and pull over? No, she actually speeds up while the son is screaming his a$$ off and attempts to get the `blood' off by using the windshield wipers. Oh btw, the husband is just now waking up (heavy sleeper).
After this fast paced opening the movie basically comes to a halt for the next hour. Don't know why the director decided to do this but if it was for character buildup, he was not successful. During the last 30 minutes we start to get some action but some of it is hard to understand. The `reeker' smells really bad when he comes to get you so they show these cheesy wavy lines that show that it does indeed 'reek' in the scene after the bad actors are already impersonating a cough and facial movements to let you know it smells. He seems to float around and actually jump time and space when they show him moving to and from victims, shooting him doesn't work but if you stick him with a shovel that does hurt him. Like I said he seems to float but in another instance he is on the top of the victim's car and by braking he is affected by gravity and falls off the car only to get run over. These are not things that I usually care to much about but I would like some consistency.
The ending is graced with a little twist that I actually thought was kind of left up to us to decipher. Were they dead the whole time? Were they in limbo? I dont know but it didn't work. They did not explain how everyone who was in the movie had died was part of this `dream' but yet there were 2 survivors-how were they in this `dream/limbo'with the dead people?
I was expecting a `B' movie of course so I gave it plenty of slack but this is just plain bad. My 11 year old who loves horror said `this is boring' and my 9 year old stated `yea, but it's not as bad as Dracula 3000'.I guess if you are familiar with that movie then you know where this one ranks!!-do not buy, catch it on cable and that's only if you need to fall asleep.

I'm not the biggest fan of the teenie slasher genre. But I like the idea every now and then to just send a bunch of teenies somewhere dangerous just to see what happens and where the danger comes from. When I began watching reeker I had absolutly no idea what to expect, which is - especially with horror movies - always the better starting point.

Reeker begins like any other teenie horror movie: the introduction shows us something evil going on somewhere (think the dog in cabin fever, the workers in creep etc.), then the title and then the teenies appear, hot for a trip to "somewhere". It's the same thing here, but I definetly prefer this movie in comparison to many other, modern teenie horror films. For one: this one is scary for sure, and that also on a psychological level because the actors are good, making you really care for the characters they play. (especially the disco-retro-guy was great, even in the making-of: "Anyway he dies on page 67."). Two: it's a gory, but not all too brutal film. A miracle to me how reeker got m-rated, but creep didn't (creep is four times more brutal). I think it's more important to make a death scary instead of just brutal. Three: there's a story here, folks. Wouldn't call it SO INTELLIGENT, but it's got more to it than just teenies being chased. The conclusion is pretty cool, especially when you begin thinking about the details and how they made it all fit together, even they way people die. Still, there's some unexplained stuff here, which is good. You can see a connection between all things and draw some sort of explanation out of this.

Unpredictable, fun, scary, and sometimes a bit dumb, when you imagine that they sometimes see strange things they logically should warn their friends of but don't even mention a word about it. A bit of a repetion of "Hey man you okay what did you see?" - "uhm... nothing." (instead of "I just killed a guy with no lower parts.") Thinking of it, this happens several times. Maybe they think they're hallucinating so they don't dare to tell the others. The only "illogical" thing that can be funny even.

Ah did I tell you about the film's content anyway? Oh it's about these teenagers on a road trip to a rave party in the deserts. One has E-pills that he'd stolen from a friend. This friend had this recorded on film and later was on the road to the same party, warning his friend that if he doesn't give him the pills back, he will go after him for sure. When the driver lady gets informed about the pills, she decides not to take the owner any further, instead she would bring him to the restaurant they had just visited some miles ago. When they get back there they realize that in the meantime everybody had gone, leaving all the food behind. The car is broken, there's no gas, so they're stuck out there. It's a bit like with IDENTITY, only that they are more friendly to each other here. Great they didn't use the clichee of everybody thinking against everybody again. When one of them tries to get help he finds an older man in a truck (M. Ironside) who is searching his wife since morning. He seems strange and dangerous at first, but in the end he's just as lost as the others, looking for answers and help. The drug dealer also is appearing every now and then somewhere, but he's worked out very well as you don't know if he's part of the danger or if he's in danger himself, he's acting very strangely which follows suit to the whole film.

Watch this film for sure. Let's hope mister payne (director) is just beginning!

'REEKER', in my opinion, is not a bad horror flick; It just needed a little more 'bang' since it has such an awesome killer/monster. I like the idea of this story and I LOVE how the 'Reeker' looks! I'm not asking for nonstop, total-fast pace and extreme gore, but come on, a creature/killer like the 'Reeker' needs better/creative ways for killing! I'm thinking 'Final Destination' style! The tools it uses seems out of place to me because the 'Reeker' seemed more of a supernatural being to me. Getting that one guy to jump out the window as a way of killing himself, makes more sense to me. Again, all of the kills, in my opinion, should of been like that. Everything else about the 'reeker' creature looked just fine. After the first few minutes, ( about 5 minutes), into this film, I was excited but 35 minutes after that, the flick just dragged and dragged. Thank God it picked up with some good 'horror action' in the last 20 to 25 minutes! Even though I knew what to expect, I still loved the ending. I'm glad I bought it. When first watching this, I thought cult classic for sure but not really. Anyway, (who am I to judge) I could be wrong. Again, not a bad horror film but with a few changes, it could of easily been a hit. Anyway, I'm glad to have it in my collection.

Reeker is quite the unique horror flick.

It's not scary at all, the acting is pretty bad all around, the characters are completely uninteresting, the suspense build-up misses the mark completely... and yet I don't hate the movie.

I can't explain it. It's a real mystery why I'm giving this movie as high of a rating as I am. It probably deserves a lower rating.

Something about the low budget feel of the entire movie sort of works in its favor instead of against it. It's like the movie isn't trying to be the scariest movie ever, and it knows its using all the same cliches other similar types of movies have been using for years, and it just rolls along at a nice enough pace to keep you guessing.

The storyline might be the one thing that saves it above everything else. Five people stranded at a small gas station in the middle of the desert where some rather odd things have been taking place there.

Strangely appealing is the best way to describe this one.

Well to start off, I have to say this movie had a really good beginning. Characters were good and settings were ok, even had a good ending. However, about half way into the movie, it kind'a fell apart. It turned into a low grade slasher flick, and I don't just mean gory, so it was a little disappointing. What was also disappointing was Michael Ironside was hardly in it. I'd say it was more of a cameo.

Also, ignore the product description above. After having seen the movie, I have no idea how they came up with that description. It makes it sound like it might be a zombie flick or something, so if that's what you're looking for, your way off. It should read more like "5 Teens on their way to a party get stranded at a deserted motel in the middle of nowhere. One by one they start to disappear, and must discover what is stocking them before it's to late."

Because it had a decent beginning and end, I had to give it at least 3 stars for effort.

Reeker (Dave Payne, 2005)

Unfortunately for Reeker, I didn't see nearly as many movies this week as I did last week, so it has very little competition for the worst movie I saw this week. In fact, I'd have to say it stands head and shoulders above everything else. I mean, when your big twist at the end of the movie explains everything...except for the first scene...someone obviously wasn't paying attention.

Story: a bunch of kids are going to a big music festival out in the desert (think Burning Man here). After a stop at a diner, they discover that one of their number, Trip (All In's Scott Whyte), is carrying about twenty thousand dollars' worth of stolen drugs. Gretchen (The Quarry's Tina Illman), who's driving, stops and orders Trip out of the car. When Trip can't get a signal in the desert, she agrees to drive him back to the diner to use their pay phone. When they get back, though, the diner and accompanying motel are deserted. Except, that is, for whatever it is that did very, very bad things to the family in the first scene. (It took me reading the message board to understand what that all had to do with the rest of the flick. I have to say that in general, I don't miss that sort of thing, and usually I'm the person doing the explaining. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm thinking if I didn't put the pieces together until getting outside help, most others won't either.)

As with most recent no-budget schlockfests like this one, you can count on all the basic, and clichéd, things that are supposed to make you jump. You can count on a couple of scenes of supposed levity. You can count on pedestrian camerawork, competent direction at best, and terrible acting. Reeker delivers on all counts, including having one of the dumbest names I've ever seen on a horror film. But really, the only surprise here is that someone thought this was worthwhile enough to make a sequel to it three years later. Avoid at all costs. (half)

To put it simply: this movie sucked. The "twist" at the end was totally predictable, nothing new at all featured in this movie. The acting was so-so, once again - nothing new. Very mediocre from beginning to end. I suppose if you're a big Arielle Kebbel fan, and I know there are some, you'll enjoy seeing her in her underwear...that scene was ridiculous, by the way. The only decent scene was the beginning, when the family pulls their car over only to have daddy mysteriously get half of his face ripped off (I could have done without the dog scene - why do animals always have to be involved?!) You've seen these same characters in a million other horror movies, but they really try to "spice it up" by throwing a blind guy in the mix - which, once again, is absolutely ridiculous. He's the dude from My So Called Life, and he's just as cheesy as he was on that show. However, No Man's Land: The Rise of the Reeker was pretty awesome and highly recommended. Better death scenes, better characters, better story, and better explanation of everything....so, to put it simply: put this movie down and go get Rise of the Reeker instead!