Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Your sense of smell is the last thing that goes before you die.......3 1/2 stars, October 21, 2008
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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A DIFFERENT TYPE OF HORROR MOVIE, November 9, 2007
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
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
CRASH, April 18, 2007
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 ?
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