One a night shift, deputy sheriff Dwayne Hopper (Patrick O'Kane) finds out some terrible things about Ronald Perkins (Richard Brake) and the disappearance of 14 children-one of whom was Hopper's son. Well, Hopper kills Perkins in a fit of rage, and the next thing you know 14 nearly unstoppable zombie like killers cause mayhem in town with only one thing in mind-kill for Perkins.
While it sounds great, "Perkins 14" is a mess from the get go. How could a movie with such an inventive premise go wrong? Well, for starters, the acting (save for Brake, whose performance as Perkins is bone chilling) is universally awful and largely amateur at best. While it's satisfyingly gory and has some decent moments in direction (I love the use of color schemes which bring to mind directors such as Argento, Bava and Fulci), the script is terrible and ends up being uninteresting, while the conclusion is too anti-climactic, the plot-holes are too gaping, the characters are uninteresting and the editing and score are jarring. I could go on really.
So why am I giving it 3? Because it's at least original, has some nice gore and has a few interesting moments. In the end though, it reminded me somewhat of another bad horror movie I've reviewed called "Frozen Scream" in that it has a great premise, yet it all goes to waste and feels like a letdown.
This is also the 4th of this years "8 Films To Die For" I've seen so far. As of now, the gory and blackly comic "Autopsy" is the only one that I've enjoyed, as the others have been decent but disappointing ("The Brøken "), a total mess (the film reviewed within) and pedestrian and dull ("Dying Breed.") So far, this years Horrorfest has mostly been a letdown. Too bad really. Maybe the next one will have more good entries. If not, then maybe they should just stop now.
While it sounds great, "Perkins 14" is a mess from the get go. How could a movie with such an inventive premise go wrong? Well, for starters, the acting (save for Brake, whose performance as Perkins is bone chilling) is universally awful and largely amateur at best. While it's satisfyingly gory and has some decent moments in direction (I love the use of color schemes which bring to mind directors such as Argento, Bava and Fulci), the script is terrible and ends up being uninteresting, while the conclusion is too anti-climactic, the plot-holes are too gaping, the characters are uninteresting and the editing and score are jarring. I could go on really.
So why am I giving it 3? Because it's at least original, has some nice gore and has a few interesting moments. In the end though, it reminded me somewhat of another bad horror movie I've reviewed called "Frozen Scream" in that it has a great premise, yet it all goes to waste and feels like a letdown.
This is also the 4th of this years "8 Films To Die For" I've seen so far. As of now, the gory and blackly comic "Autopsy" is the only one that I've enjoyed, as the others have been decent but disappointing ("The Brøken "), a total mess (the film reviewed within) and pedestrian and dull ("Dying Breed.") So far, this years Horrorfest has mostly been a letdown. Too bad really. Maybe the next one will have more good entries. If not, then maybe they should just stop now.