This movie sells itself as a horror anthology featuring "five interlocking tales of terror" but in reality only about half the stories are actually connected and the terror went out for a ride and never came back.
The movie feels like a bunch of deleted scenes taken from other movies and mashed together. Most of stories are linked kind of like this: we follow a person A who walks by person B and now we start following person B; or we step out of the hotel room of person A and step into the room next door to start following person B for no reason. There is no interaction between person A or B (with a few exceptions) which makes most of these connection meaningless and does not enhance the overall narrative (if there is meant to be one).
None of the characters are memorable and the film doesn't make any effort to develop them or make the audience care about them. It's just a number of random people doing random pointless things. We follow one group, then we follow another group which has no relation to the first group, and now we follow another random person who just happened to be nearby. Why should the viewer care what happens to any of them?
The writing and acting was cringe-worthy and hilarious at times. The CGI was hard to look at. The gore was actually ok. The camera was often too shaky and annoying and they often filmed with a wide lens which distorted the picture on either side of the screen. The movie does not rely on jump scares but at the same time it doesn't do anything an average horror-viewer hasn't seen before. The R-rating feels wasted on it.
This is what the honest movie description should say: "Five loosely connected tales of boredom that follow the fates of forgettable strangers who find themselves in random predicaments over one very long and tedious night on a desolate stretch of desert highway." At least they got the part about the highway right!
Skip this movie and go watch Trick 'r Treat (2007) to see a fun horror anthology done right, where the stories actually connect meaningfully, and the characters get some development in the little time they are given on screen.
The scariest thing about this movie is how many people seem to think that this is good horror. I don't know how this movie got so many high ratings or which parallel universe those reviewers came from, but Southbound doesn't do anything new or interesting and is ultimately just a disappointing messy roadkill that even a family of demon-worshiping cannibals would not enjoy.
The movie feels like a bunch of deleted scenes taken from other movies and mashed together. Most of stories are linked kind of like this: we follow a person A who walks by person B and now we start following person B; or we step out of the hotel room of person A and step into the room next door to start following person B for no reason. There is no interaction between person A or B (with a few exceptions) which makes most of these connection meaningless and does not enhance the overall narrative (if there is meant to be one).
None of the characters are memorable and the film doesn't make any effort to develop them or make the audience care about them. It's just a number of random people doing random pointless things. We follow one group, then we follow another group which has no relation to the first group, and now we follow another random person who just happened to be nearby. Why should the viewer care what happens to any of them?
The writing and acting was cringe-worthy and hilarious at times. The CGI was hard to look at. The gore was actually ok. The camera was often too shaky and annoying and they often filmed with a wide lens which distorted the picture on either side of the screen. The movie does not rely on jump scares but at the same time it doesn't do anything an average horror-viewer hasn't seen before. The R-rating feels wasted on it.
This is what the honest movie description should say: "Five loosely connected tales of boredom that follow the fates of forgettable strangers who find themselves in random predicaments over one very long and tedious night on a desolate stretch of desert highway." At least they got the part about the highway right!
Skip this movie and go watch Trick 'r Treat (2007) to see a fun horror anthology done right, where the stories actually connect meaningfully, and the characters get some development in the little time they are given on screen.
The scariest thing about this movie is how many people seem to think that this is good horror. I don't know how this movie got so many high ratings or which parallel universe those reviewers came from, but Southbound doesn't do anything new or interesting and is ultimately just a disappointing messy roadkill that even a family of demon-worshiping cannibals would not enjoy.