REEKER

Five students heading to a party in the middle of the desert leave together in the same vehicle with the intention of splitting the costs. One of them, Trip, before leaving had stolen a significant amount of ecstasy from a drug dealer, and now the robbed man is on the thief's trail. During the journey, however, Gretchen, the owner of the vehicle and the driver, decides that Trip is a danger to the group and decides to drop him off at the first gas station. But left with the car broken down, the five young people take refuge in the motel next to the gas station and discover to their surprise that the place is completely deserted. The night that awaits them will be filled with nightmares and strange presences. It has also arrived in Italy, albeit with extreme delay (the film is dated 2005), "Reeker – Between Life and Death," which probably represents the most glaring example of "bottom of the barrel," the classic movie on which no distributor with a bit of common sense would bet too much; and indeed, the film circulated for about a week, in the first days of September 2008, in a small number of copies. We are faced with one of those films that are watched with great indifference, incapable of evoking emotional participation, devoid of ideas, somewhat boring, and generally also poorly made. The "genius" idea around which the entire film is built, and which then represents its final twist, is as old as the hills and in recent years has been brought to the screens far too many times (and almost always with mediocre results), so the big surprise in "Reeker – Between Life and Death" is predictable even before seeing the film. David Payne, director and screenwriter of the film, sets up the typical situation that underlies any modern or past teen slasher: five young people (one of whom is handicapped, "Don't Open That Door" docet), a journey, the car breaks down, the night to be spent in a hostile place, a boogeyman who hunts them down. Add to it all a pinch (but really very little) of sex, drugs, and a splash of blood, just to remain faithful to the genre, and the pre-cooked movie is ready. The problem is that, even being die-hard fans of slashers and films that have the ingredients listed above as their basis, it is difficult to find any interesting element in this "Reeker," since it is a film devoid of any real bite. The few scenes of fear and/or tension that appear are definitely poorly shot and somewhat confusing (a glaring example is the scene in the latrine), often relying on gratuitous sound effects; the characters do not manage to be hated by the viewer nor to win his sympathy, remaining two-dimensional figures that interact with each other only because someone put them together. The emblematic case is constituted by the character of the blind boy, the true great intruder of the story: a character of this kind is difficult to manage without falling into ridicule, and indeed Payne is no exception and paints his character with a pathetic-grotesque charge frankly embarrassing (when the guy is on the roof of the camper to escape the aggressor and then suddenly finds himself on the ground saying to his friend "I had forgotten I was up there" we feel embarrassed because we do not know whether to laugh or pity the character). Another serious flaw of the film are the dialogues, among the worst heard recently in a horror movie: when the characters do not say juvenile nonsense (which is acceptable and justified) they come up with hackneyed phrases guaranteed to make you laugh like "To live you must not be afraid of dying!" and stuff like that. But the icing on the cake is represented by the film's big bad guy, a boogeyman without art or part that has the characteristic of emitting a terrible stench (which is also visually rendered by the slightly wavy image…!). Why does the guy stink? Is he decomposing? Did he eat a deadly mix of beans and onions? Who knows, it's not given to know. Even aesthetically the "Creeker" is definitely not memorable: a slender figure with a hood and a blender equipped with rotating blades instead of a hand… well, because perhaps it's cooler. It's a bit of a shame that "Reeker – Between Life and Death" turned out to be a stupid and ugly little movie because if they had focused on the figure of the monster (taking care of its look more, of course) giving it a personality and mythology, an interesting product could have come out. A few ironic moments (the family game in the introduction and the window gag) and a dignified staging can be saved, but for the rest "Reeker – Between Life and Death" is the classic movie that is forgotten a few hours after viewing.