[Acolytes]
Plot:James Tresswick and Mark Vincent are victims of a brutal bully Gary Parker who has maltreated both boys, marking their bodies and spoiling their young lives. In their last year of high school, James and Mark find a way to stop being victims. They're going to kill Gary; Wandering alone around an isolated forest - the suspected site of the disappearance of a local girl - 17 year old Mark strays upon an adult male filling in a trench. It's suspicious and tantalizing.
Mark returns with his friend James and Chasley Keys and they bring shovels to exhume what will probably be rotting garbage or someone's dead pet - or so they tell themselves. They find the ghostly white body of a woman. She's a tourist - a Canadian backpacker.
The "trench" is a grave. The "adult male" is her killer. And they've got him by the balls. Responding to Mark's intimations James floats an idea to seek out "the sicko". It'll be a bit of fun. He's confident the guy lives in their suburb; Mark saw his car parked on a trail; Mark knows what the car looks like; Mark knows what he looks like. It can be done.
Chasely goes along with it. No surprise. James has done all her thinking since they started a relationship. Mark agrees because he's got a thing for Chasely and he'd like to appear a bit more like her boyfriend, but mostly Mark agrees because he carries a culpable secret. They find the car and the killer 24 hours later. He's got the same house as everyone else and a kid and a wife. Jeez, it's anticlimactic. Then, in Chasely's bedroom, as the girl cleans up the latest damage done to Mark's face by an animal called Gary Parker, James floats another idea;
What if the killer were contacted and told the name of a guy that they'd like to see dropped in a hole of his own? He's their secret, isn't he? They kind of own him, don't they? If he thinks they might let him go he'd do anything, wouldn't he? What could go wrong? James, Mark and Chasley are about to cross a line of no return as serial killer Ian Wright lures the vulnerable teenagers into his violent world.
Cast:Danny Baldwin,
Holly Baldwin,
Harley Bennick,
Michael Dorman,
Sue Dwyer,
Joel Edgerton,
Sebastian Gregory,
Isabella Heathcote,,
Todd Levi
Hanna Mangan Lawrence,
Belinda McClory,
Joshua Payne,
Anthony Phelan,
Leigh Prewecki,
Ryan Sheldrake.
My Thoughts:Had potential, squandered potential, all is lost.
Review:The concept of a horror film where a group of bullied kids decide to exact revenge on their tormentor is nothing new. But a horror film where a group of tormented kids, try to exact revenge on their tormentor, by blackmailing a serial killer into killing said tormentor, otherwise...they'll inform the cops of their knowledge of his latest murder? That's certainly something new. Unfortunately, "Acolytes" is an Aussie horror movie. Meaning it's already flawed from the jump. You can expect lackadasical acting, a lack of appropriate music, and of course the grainy look and tone of the movie. Honestly, will the Aussies ever get it right with horror?
"CUT" was as close as they came. "Rogue" was as close as they got after "CUT", and that film wasn't very good at all. And don't even get me started on "Wolf Creek". At any rate, "Acolytes" lays out a good premise, an interesting and fresh new concept on the modern slasher movie. But it's characters and lead performers are so droll and boring, that if they all wound up dead at the hands of this killer, you probably wouldn't really give a crap. And when the viewer feels this way, it means the writer has created piss poor characters.
I honestly couldn't muster what it took to give a care about any of these people. And even though the film laid out for us who was the bad guy (the local bully/ex-con), and who were the good guys (the two kids and their female friend), I still looked at all of them the same way. Cliche, tepid, boring film characters. The killer is even a cliche. The guy is the normal-looking, suburban, intelligent, specs-sporting type. Nothing scary about him at all. And his violent mood swings which are basically profanity-laced tyraids that someone's little brother would throw, don't help the character at all. Then there's the predictability factor. Of course you know this guy is not gonna allow himself to be manipulated by a trio of teens forever, and eventually will turn on them. Predictable...thy name is "Acolytes".
Although I have to admit, seeing the local bully finally get it was refreshing, because he was such a prick. Still, the films core characters were very uninteresting, and the overall series of events were enough to put me to sleep. Alot of the film is spent showing the three teens hanging out in the woods. Why exactly is this of any interest to us? In a horror film, I wanna see the characters doing something to further the story. Not "kickin it" in the woods, kicking dirt, throwing rocks, and walking across logs. This does not equal "scary" unless you're one of those old hermits who lives in the woods, and hates bratty teenagers on your property.
The suspense in this film is so flat, even the moments where things should pick up, come out uneven and boring. The scene where the teens find the killer burying a body in the woods for example. A scene which should've been the films "big moment", just fails to impress due to improper use of camera angles, music, and tension-building. The sad part is, everything after that is equally as bad or worse. The movie does give it the old college try though.
As in throwing the viewer off balance which quick flashes, loud noises mixed in with the flashes, and quick-cut flashbacks. Rob Zombie did the same thing in "House Of 1000 Corpses". Only he did it a lot better, and knew how to craft the story to be creepy, scary, and disturbing. This movie looked more like some people were gathered together, given 200 bucks a piece, and told to just do stuff for the camera. The few deaths that there are are bloody, just not very creative and unique when it comes to style and methods.
In the end though, a handful of bloody deaths with nothing positive to act as a base for the rest of the picture, do not a good slasher movie make. The films finale packs some decent energy, but it only lasts about 10 minutes. And when you compare a 10-minute energetic finale, to 77 prior minutes of nothing even remotely interesting or entertaining....then the finale really seems miniscule despite it's best efforts. As far as Aussie horror goes, "Acolytes" dethrones "Wolf Creek" for the title of worst Aussie horror movie.
Positives:The final ten minutes, a good idea for a story.
Negatives:A good idea for a story which was poorly executed in every way, uninteresting characters, a low entertainment factor, and a badly written script.
Overall:Half a star out of four.
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