The Reeds
Starring: Anna Brewster, OT Fagbenie, Will Mellor, Danny Caltagirone, Scarlett Johnson, Geoff Bell and and Emma Catherwood
Director: Nick Cohen
Rating: R
DVD Release Date: March 23, 2010
Runtime: 90 minutes
Produced by: The Reeds Film Ltd.; Lionsgate
ASIN: B00344EAP0
Where to Buy:
Amazon and other fine DVD/Horror retailersSynopsis:
A weekend boating party turns into a nightmare for a group of young Londoners when they stumble upon a terrifying secret hidden in the reeds.
Hello Ghouls and Boils,
Today we present you with another review of a movie from After Dark’s “8 films to Die For” – “The Reeds”, written by SNS Minion Lee Clark Zumpe. He and I have similar taste in films… I am beginning to think I won’t even waste my time on these flicks. It sounds to me as if they need a better film screener and to reach out to a broader base of filmmakers. (Hey, After Dark - I am unemployed, give me a call. *chuckles*) There are tons of terrorific independent filmmakers out there… why After Dark isn’t finding them is beyond me. But I will let Lee tell you all about the film and you can judge for yourself. Enjoy, my fiends!
Abstrusely,
Sarah L. Covert
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A group of young adults leave the relative safety of a big city and travel to some rural backwater with plans to spend the night in the wilderness accompanied by plenty of alcoholic beverages.
No, really.
The first 30 minutes of The Reeds could have been at least a dozen other straight-to-DVD releases from the last few years. Part of the After Dark Horrorfest 8 Films to Die For set from Lionsgate, The Reeds is built on a horror cliché. Fortunately, both the above-average acting and the expert cinematography make the stale introduction tolerable.
The young Londoners arrive at a boatyard in some anonymous rural village, intending to rent a boat from a menacing old man who appears to be a horror film version of the cantankerous patriarch Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I’ve spent time mucking around in the tributaries of central Florida’s Withlacoochee River – an environment as beautiful as it is isolated – but I found the setting of The Reeds particularly eerie. It’s amazing how such a scenic setting can grow ominous so quickly – and the filmmakers make effective use of that fact.
Imagine Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen – the scene in which they lose the channel and get mired in the mud. Only, imagine some unseen, unknown sadistic predator stalking them while they’re peeling leeches off of their legs. That sums up The Reeds – up to a point.
Just when the effects of the creepy scenery are starting to sink in, the story goes off on a tangent – away from the routine slasher gore-fest that viewers anticipated. Without spoiling the innovative course correction, the tale takes on a decidedly supernatural spin which emerges so gradually that it keeps the viewer guessing for quite a while.
Unfortunately, some of the movie’s strengths are eclipsed by the heightened pacing in the second half of the movie. The realistic dialog which had given depth to the individual characters early in the film evaporates. As their circumstances grow increasingly direr, each of the characters degenerates into a two-dimensional cardboard cutout.
In this instance, the encroaching darkness actually makes the setting less frightening, somehow – possibly because the vastness of the environment is not as evident and the negligibility of the individual is not as powerful.
Even though the storyline is distinctive- in the end, the payoff doesn’t quite live up to the imaginative scenario.
Final Thoughts:
The Reeds twists a common horror trope in a manner that doesn’t change the what but plays with the how and the why of the plot. In the end, the result is more fascinating than frightening. I give this film 2.5 out of 5.Lee Clark Zumpe (Minion/Reviewer)
